Antiques Roadshow in Aberystwyth

Last Thursday my fellow Roadshow specialists and I converged on the sunny seaside town of Aberystwyth in Wales for another day of filming for the Antiques Roadshow. Perched on a hill, the renowned Arts Centre was our host, and what a delightful day we had. Sunny skies (yes!), incredibly warm and welcoming visitors, and a truly stunning location. I managed to film three things but, as ever, you’ll have to wait until the show airs in order to find out what they were. With thanks to the Arts Centre, you’ll find a photo of me just before I started filming one of them below. And whilst I’m on thanks, I’d also like to thank my lovely owner!
I booked a late train the next day, as I wanted to spend some quality time with the superb studio pottery collection in the Arts Centre. It turned out that my delightful colleague Barley Roscoe knows the curator, so the lovely Penny Brittain and I were treated to a behind-the-scenes look at the collection. If you don’t know it, and you love studio pottery, get yourself there as soon as you can. They have everything from Bernard Leach to Janice Tchalenko, Katharine ‘Beano’ Pleydell-Bouverie to William Staite-Murray, Michael Cardew to Charles Vyse, and much more. I was particularly taken with some of the glazes by Reginald Wells at Coldrum. A pottery to watch, I’ve always felt.
And to top it all off, I was able to buy something. Not from the museum of course (although there is an excellent shop), but from a truly brilliant shop called ‘Craft‘ which is surely the future of charity shops. Located in an almost Modernist glass building on the railway station platform, this innovative recycler has impressive stock, stats, and literature. They’ve sold over 500,000 items from over 13,000 homes since 2006, and saved 1,546 tonnes from landfill. And, according to them, if you piled all the wardrobes they have sold on top of each other, the pile would be higher than Snowdon! They’re a jolly friendly lot too, and I wholeheartedly recommend a visit – you literally can’t miss them as you arrive. And what did I buy? A lovely pink and translucent white 1950s Murano glass bowl for a bargainous £10. It looks sensational on my black glass Art Deco coffee table. Aberystwyth rocks!