Quantity & Quality at TW Gaze

“You wait for a good collection and three come along at the same time!”

Quality and Quantity Delivered in Spades in August Special Sale

 

The old adage about buses is relatable to antiques this month! Single owner collections offer the opportunity to acquire objects that may be fresh to the art market and often benefit from being acquired by experts in the field. This is a wonderful occurrence and not only does it provide the opportunity to celebrate the objects, but the people that collected them.

 

Old Hall, Blofield

Ian & Antonia Macpherson deceased

Is an impressive Georgian country house which was purchased in 1982 by Ian & Antonia Macphersons on their return to England. Ian Macpherson was a self made man and was part of the Special Operations Executive in WWII, his Language skills in French and German initially led Ian into officer training. Over his military career he proceeded to add, Spanish, Russian, Arabic and Bulgarian to his repertoire. Ian was awarded a Military Cross for his work during WWII and carried out one of the few operations into an enemy country. Following demobilisation he joined the Iraq Petroleum Company and negotiated with several regimes including Saddam Hussein whom he successfully brokered a deal with.

Their collection is likely to have had contributions from Antonia’s family who owned Bramerton Hall and whose grandmothers cousin was a Bignold (founders of Norwich Union). The hall and its contents were passed to Albany Blake’s grandchildren, (one of whom was Antonia), in 1944. Therefore, Old Hall has a wealth of interesting items be it Norwich School paintings, Porcelain figures, 18th century Worcester ceramics, Silver from the 18th & 19th century and an abundance of oriental wares from the 18th & 19th Century.

A particularly unusual occurrence is the collection of ‘two pairs and a spare’ of Chinese Qianlong ‘chicken skin’ vases. The term ‘chicken skin’ refers to the bumpy turquoise of the vases which form the ground. An uncommon form of decoration that was used for export wares the cartouches are decorated depicting Mandarin figures. One of the pairs retain their original covers, estimate £500-600

This is not the only feature that comes in volume and quality, an early 19thC Derby dinner service will certainly be keenly sought after. Each piece has been hand-painted, decorated with three posies to the outer edge with an additional posy in the centre and gilt rimmed. This is not dissimilar to the ever popular Royal Crown Derby ‘posies’.  Estimate £400-500

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Peter M. Sellers deceased

Peter began collecting ‘dump glass’ in the early 2000’s and his passion led him to write a book on the subject. As the name suggests ‘dumps’ were made from molten glass from bottle factories that would have been disposed at the end of the day.  Because glass was expensive to produce it would be seen as wasteful to dispose of any, hence the ‘end of day’ glass was usually formed into paperweight type objects. Basic examples have bubble inclusions, the more sought after examples have terracotta or clay objects inserted into the glass. After collecting glass dumps for ten years Peter found there were no reference books on the topic so, (collaborating posthumously with William Drew Gaskell, a Californian based collector), he wrote and self published a book titled ‘ Victorian Dumps- Paperweights, Mantel Ornaments, Doorstops & Whimsies 1820-1914’.

Included in his collection offered for sale on the 8th August are many unusual examples illustrated in the book including terracotta inclusions and floral examples.

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Justin Knott deceased

A local collector with a passion for silver and oriental ceramics, including treasures from the Tek Sing shipwreck which was discovered by Michael Hatcher in 1999.  His crew raised about 350,000 pieces of the ship’s cargo of Chinese porcelain which are over 200 years old.

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 Catalogue

 

 

 

 

 

 

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