UK

With the centenary of the act that enfranchised female voters aged over 30 very much in the headlines, a collection of First World War uniforms and a photo album sold by C&T Auctioneers (20% buyer’s premium) underlines the role played by women in that conflict.

A coin that a set a record for a British five pound piece features among the hammer highlights for coins and banknotes sold across the year at auction.

A bustling scene of Leicester Square by genre painter Edward Prentis (1797-1854) took £6800 at David Lay (18% buyer’s premium) of Penzance.

In our series looking through the keyhole of ‘bricks and mortar’ shops, ATG talks to Brenda Nassarian of English and French decorative interiors business Arundel Eccentrics. When and why did you open the shop?

More down to earth than the Bentley Speed Sixes and MG TDs of the classic car world, this 1961 GPO van nevertheless was a major draw at Biddle & Webb (20% buyer’s premium) in Birmingham.

Music played its part in the first Dominic Winter sale of the year, with books, scores and other autograph material from another but differently sourced Elgar collection to others offered before by the saleroom.

Milliner Victoria Grant is known for her high-society hats, worn by the likes of Kate Moss, Beyoncé and Carla Delevigne. But in an exhibition of her works at Old Master dealer Philip Mould’s gallery, society faces are on, not under, the hats.

After more than a decade of holding auctions in west London, Holts Auctioneers is relocating to a new saleroom to the south-east of the capital this March.

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).

This painting of a fire in north London drew heated bidding when it went under the hammer at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood (21% buyer’s premium).

Old Master specialist Derek Johns became a director of Sotheby’s in 1968 and head of its Old Master paintings department in 1974. He became an independent art dealer in 1981. He now deals from Bury Street after many years on Duke Street.

It’s lucky that Michael Scott and Paul Hodson are such firm friends, or the next War of the Roses could break out.

The Zulu War medal awarded to Driver Charles Robson, batman to commanding officer Lieutenant John Chard during the epic defence of Rorke’s Drift, sold for £110,000 at Dix Noonan Webb on March 2.

Billed as a collection, possibly better described as a hoard, the contents of boxes stored in warehouse units were “the magic ingredients for auction goers” according to Dreweatts’ deputy chairman James Nicholson.

Our weekly selection from salerooms and dealerships.

Antique Church Furnishings, which describes itself as ‘God’s Furniture since 1985’, sells almost everything in the religious line – from chasubles to crucifixes and misericordes to missal stands.

Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood of Exeter plans to hold its first-ever 20th century and contemporary art and design sale later this month.

Upholstered Victorian armchairs not being the most in-demand of auction lots at present, the £100-150 estimate of a pair offered at Greenslade Taylor Hunt (19.5% buyer’s premium) did not seem overly pessimistic.

According to Wikipedia, the medieval city of Norwich had at one time 36 parish churches, the largest collection of urban medieval buildings north of the Alps.