An Archive of Furniture Photographs Acquired IV

At the recent marvellous Antiques For Everyone fair at the NEC in Birmingham, a friendly dealer approached me with a folder of around 50 photographs of furniture, home accessories, and room designs. Her father was a teacher and had used them in the late 1950s and early 1960s as props for lessons. Since he retired, […]

Dartington Glass: I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles!

2006 saw the 40th anniversary of Dartington Glass, one of the UK’s only surviving independent glass companies. To commemorate this event, Graham Cooley exhibited hundreds of pieces of Dartington Glass dating from 1967 into the 1990s from his private collection. In conjunction with that, I wrote and published a book with Eve Thrower, the daughter […]

Alla Moda Italian Ceramics Exhibition Launches

It’s out and it’s on! Last Saturday I joined Graham Cooley at the King’s Lynn Arts Centre in King’s Lynn, Norfolk, to launch Alla Moda, the exhibition behind my latest book. With over 750 ceramics on display, Graham’s private collection is almost certainly the largest private collection of Italian ceramics in Europe, if not the […]

What’s behind my latest book?

My new book on mid-century modern Italian ceramics, Alla Moda, has just arrived, and the exhibition is about to be launched. Sitting last night looking through the book made me remember the long journey I’ve made putting it together. I also thought about all the elements that went into making it, here are some statistics: […]

Masterpieces To Marvel Over

My next stop after seeing Ken Bull’s amazing collection of Mordan pencils was a darkened, quietly calm room where I met with a cool towel for my brow, more than one glass of something white and chilled, and a comfy chez longue. Once my equilibrium had been restored, it was back to Masterpiece to see […]

Mordans at Masterpiece

Although I’m very much a 20th century boy, my collections do vary quite widely in terms of date. One of my oldest, both in terms of the date of the objects themselves and the fact it was one of my first targets, is my collection of 19thC Mordan pencils. I’ve been collecting these since I […]