TW Gaze

Responsible for the flowers at the Queen’s coronation, the society florist Constance Spry (1886-1960) is also credited with the ‘democratisation’ of flower arranging.

Publisher tried to link book to the poet to boost sales but a revised version was issued instead

Sold for £4600 in a February 6 sale held in the Chichester salerooms of Stride & Son (18% buyer’s premium) was an album of cut-paper work produced by Elizabeth Cobbold c.1810-20.

Complete with 16 tissue-guarded photogravure plates in the original, stylish decorative cloth binding, one of 200 standard copies of Peter Henry Emerson’s famous Marsh Leaves of 1895 was the star turn in a recent Norfolk sale.

Best-seller and one of the biggest surprises at the white-glove sale of a mechanical music collection was a musical box, the catalogue entry of which could be summarised as ‘famous name, doesn’t work’.

Weekly clearance sales are increasingly being replaced by newly branded formats as auction houses are responding to fresh consumer trends.

More than 500 lots of pictures, sculpture, furniture, textiles, architectural features and artefacts spanning 2000 years from the collection of the late Robert Barley, will come to auction at TW Gaze later this month.

Auction houses in Bristol, Staffordshire and Norfolk have chosen to invest in new premises this year. Suggesting continued confidence in the regional auction market, Bristol Auction Rooms, Potteries Auctions and TW Gaze are planning to open new salerooms by the autumn.

Flash from the past at the Diss rooms of TW Gaze (18% buyer’s premium).

A good weight and a good name helped this London 1890 embossed silver punch bowl to double the lower estimate at TW Gaze (18% buyer’s premium).

More than 400 lots of railwayana, assembled from the 1950s onwards by a single collector, will be offered at Norfolk auction house TW Gaze on January 5.