Sovereign Woodworkers Limited was established in a vacant shop in Tawa Street, Gonville, a suburb of Whanganui in 1949 by Leonard Austin Brasell, Arnold (Arnie) H. W. Burling and Edwin (Wyn) H. Hart. The company had its immediate origins in Austin Brasell’s own home workshop a few years or so before. Here he developed a woodturning hobby to produce a small range of inlaid and laminated wooden souvenir ware which he marketed mainly in the metropolitan centres. During the 1950s and 60s the company bought several of the surrounding Gonville shops, established a country-wide distribution and, by the late 1960s, had expanded to employ 20 staff and over 100 different lines of wooden souvenir ware. In 1967 the company opened a new factory on the site, using one of the adjoining shops as a retail outlet. By that time Sovereign was at its zenith. But changes in the tourist market during the 1980s saw the company downsize to six full-time staff. In 1992 the firm was placed in receivership after a potential joint venture with a Taiwanese investor fell through. About 1995-6 the Gonville factory was purchased and New Zealand Timber Arts with Ian Cragg as manager continued to produce laminated woodware for the souvenir market. New Zealand Timber Arts moved its operation to Bulls in 2000 thus ending the 50-year association with Gonville. In the first couple of decades of its existence Sovereign produced some of the few quality New Zealand-made souvenirs available at the time.
