It’s done! I’m delighted to announce that the second, revised and expanded, edition of my ground-breaking and sell-out bookalogue ‘Fat Lava: West German Ceramics of the 1960s & 70s‘ is now at the printers. Phew. Since the first edition went out of print, demand for copies has been consistently high, leading to the decision to […]
I had to read the price twice. Then a third time, just to make sure. Yes, Eileen Gray’s Art Deco ‘Dragons’ chair really had sold for £17.7 million! For me, the most surprising aspect of the recent Yves Saint Laurent auction held at Christie’s in Paris was the level of prices being paid for furniture […]
Sunday meant the (reputedly even better) flea market between 38th & 39th off 9th Ave, which we went to after an ‘interesting’ visit to the stunning Guggenheim Museum near Central Park. To look after bodily hunger as well as collecting hunger, the banker and I booked ourselves in for brunch at the perfectly situated and […]
This weekend, I flew to New York — for lunch! I was lucky enough to be flying out to the Big Apple to meet my old business colleague and good friend Julian Ellison, founder and CEO of LiveAuctioneers. Julian founded the company after leaving our alma mater icollector, which we both ended up effectively running […]
As some of you will know, one of the many hats I wear is that of ‘Head of Miller’s Online’, running the new Miller’s website at www.millersguides.com. As part of this exciting and growing free site, we have set up some interesting public polls, one of which asks whether traditional brown furniture is making a […]
It may have been the 13th Cambridge Glass Fair, but the only people who were unlucky were those who didn’t visit! But there can’t have been many of them, as this fair was amongst the very busiest I have attended – and I’ve been going since the first. The queue began to build an hour […]
This year’s dates for the Antiques Roadshow have now been published, and are listed below. Those in bold are the events I will be attending as a specialist on the Miscellaneous or Collectables tables. Dig out your treasures and I hope to see you there! Thursday 19 March – Lincoln Cathedral, Lincoln Wednesday 25 March […]
They say radio is growing in popularity, and it’s certainly been an increasing part of my life recently, with three interviews in the past two weeks! Up today was BBC radio Cambridgeshire, with another phone-in valuation that also helped promote the excellent Cambridge Glass Fair this Sunday, at Chilford Hall. Here I am in the […]
I’ve just got back from an extremely enjoyable one-and-a-half hour long phone-in valuation for BBC Radio London. Hosted by the lovely Lesley Joseph, I was invited along as a guest with my friend Tracy Martin. Lesley is best known for her character Dorian in hit BBC TV sitcom ‘Birds of a Feather’ but, unlike her […]
With things a little tighter for most of us this year, it’s great to find a place where we can still feed our addictions without breaking the bank. That place is certainly Alfie’s Antiques Market in north west London, where I have just spent an extremely enjoyable and fruitful two days. Whatever it is that […]
Now there’s a name you don’t hear every day. But it is one that you might hear more of in the future. Frantisek Zemek (1913-60) is arguably one of the lost great names in 20th century glass design, and was key to the development of hot-worked glass in Czechoslovakia. Starting his career as a glass […]
It’s true – one of the greatest antique and collectables events in the South of England has returned. Early last year, long-standing event organiser Pig & Whistle held the last of their immensely popular fairs at historic Alexandra Palace in London. With the venue looking set to become a casino, it was curtains for this […]