East of England

The owner of an antiques shop in the Norfolk town of Diss which has been in his family for nearly 50 years is closing the business and relocating a few miles away.

Bids of £100 and upwards bought bidders a history of the English hearth and home among the Crowther lots at Cheffins on June 13-14, where 80% of the lower-priced items went to private buyers.

For Paul Nunn, founder of antique clocks and barometers dealership Olde Time, the virtues of fairs and the internet have always been secondary to that of the physical shop.

Some 240 lots in a recent two-day book sale in Norfolk came from the library of local authors and collectors David and Patricia Cory, with science fiction, fantasy, ghost stories and crime fiction very much in evidence.

British watercolours depicting the beautiful county of Devon and painted during the medium’s golden age drew eager bidding at Cheffins of Cambridge (22.5% buyer’s premium).

The latest batch of period portraits to pass through Cheffins featured several from a late-16th century property in Great Chesterford, Essex. Passed by descent, the quartet was led by an attractive English School portrait of Queen Mary I (1516-58), an oil painted on an oval 2ft x 21in (62 x 53cm) canvas.

The Horlicks collection of Robert ‘Mouseman’ Thompson furniture will be sold at auction in Stansted Mountfitchet this autumn.

No two jobs are the same for the art shippers offering a bespoke service at the top end.

Less well-known than other daring young women in their flying machines, Peggy Salaman, or rather a bronze bust of her, emerged from a Mayfair basement to take off in a Suffolk saleroom.

The response to Suffolk House Antiques’ summer exhibition has been enthusiastic, with customers snapping up some key pieces even before the show’s official opening.

The pretty market town of Harleston in Norfolk’s Waveney Valley is getting ready for its busy annual community-led antiques and vintage street market, now in its fifth year.

British artists dominated Sworders’ (23% buyer’s premium) Modern & Contemporary prints sale in Essex, with works by Banksy, Patrick Hughes, Damien Hirst, Bridget Riley and Grayson Perry all getting away.

In our continuing series looking through the keyhole of ‘bricks and mortar’ shops and centres, ATG talks to Lesley Austin who runs The Shed with her partner Ken Dunn.

It’s all in the family for new fair organiser Emma Sheridan. Her father Gary Sheridan is GNB Fairs, with antiques and collectors’ fairs running at eight venues in the UK, including three in Suffolk and one at the Dover Cruise Terminal.

T Crowther & Sons was founded in 1880 in Fulham and was well established before the First World War. The company was split into two sections in the 1940s: Albert Crowther trading from Syon Lodge and T Crowther & Sons in Fulham.