A Painting – Helen Grunwald & Russian Chapel Murals

Helen Grunwald Painting Thumbnail

I’ve been collecting inexpensive pictures, and etchings in particular, since I was about 15 or 16 years old. I’m sure my friends thought I was weird. In fact, I know they did. What attracted me, apart from the prices I could afford as a schoolboy, was that there was usually a story of some sort […]

NEW Miller’s Collectables Price Guide 2016-2017 – OUT NOW!

Millers Collectables Price Guide 2016

Now in it’s 27th year, the all new edition of the Miller’s Collectables Handbook & Price Guide is hot off the presses, having been published this week. I say all new, because every edition is entirely new – over 4,000 completely different collectables hand-selected by Judith and I are featured in glorious technicolour in this […]

Alla Moda ‘Flower Painter’ – Designer’s Identity Revealed!

Milvia Flower Painter

The identity of the so-called ‘Flower Painter’, who decorated a wide range of mid-century modern Italian ceramics with quirky, colourful and cool stick people, animals and other objects during the 1950s & 60s, has long been a mysterious enigma. When building Graham Cooley’s ground-breaking ‘Alla Moda’ exhibition of 2012, and when I was compiling my […]

Atomic Underwear! 1940s Atomaid Nylon Stockings

It’s not the sort of thing that I’d buy usually, but it was the artwork on this packet of 1940s Atomaid Hosiery nylon stockings that caught my eye. At first I almost thought it was a modern ‘vintage’ joke, but looking closer, it was clear from the material of, and wear on, the packaging that […]

From Georgian England to India – A Primitive Lady

Primitive Indian Doll Head

I don’t usually buy wooden things, but I always pick up and look at things that catch my eye, regardless of what they are made of, or even are. There’s always something new to learn. Last time I went to the excellent antiques centres at Sawbridgeworth in Essex, I found this rather stern looking lady […]

The BBC Antiques Roadshow in The Daily Mail

I recently wrote an article for The Daily Mail’s ‘Weekend’ magazine about my experiences behind the scenes of the Antiques Roadshow. Although I still see myself a a ‘new boy’, I’ve been a specialist on the show for nearly a decade now. How time has flown – and what stories have been uncovered and discoveries […]

The UK’s 50 Best Antiques & Vintage Shops

I was once again asked by Homes & Antiques magazine to be part of an expert panel given the nigh-on impossible task of selecting the ’50 Best Antiques & Vintage Shops’ from across the UK. My colleagues were drawn from across the full spectrum of the modern antiques, decorative and vintage industry today and included […]

Mark Hill, Elvis Presley & Jonathan Harris Studio Glass

Jonathan Harris Elvis Presley Cameo Graal Vase designed by Mark Hill

Me, Elvis Presley and Jonathan Harris? An unlikely combination, I hear you say. Well, I’d agree, it’s funny how seemingly disparate things can come together for some reason. But, quite often, when they do, amazing things happen. And that’s what happened here. In this instance, it was The British Glass Foundation charity that brought us […]

A Roger Fry Portrait & The Bloomsbury Group

Roger Fry Portrait

“They lived in squares, painted circles and loved in triangles.” said American poet and wit Dorothy Parker about the many members of the Bloomsbury Group. A loosely (yet often very closely!) related group of artists, writers, critics, aesthetes, intellectuals and philosophers, I’ve been obsessed with them since school, and relished learning more about them at […]

Lord McAlpine’s Murano
Glass Collection

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been involved with the cataloguing, valuation and sale of a small collection of Murano glass once owned by the legendary businessman, politician and collector Lord Alistair McAlpine (1942-2014). Built up from the 1980s-2000s, the collection was acquired by his friend the writer and curator Karun Thakar, who has taken […]

West Horsley Place, Sotheby’s & Bamber Gascoigne!

It’s a charming twist that could have come from the pen of P.G. Wodehouse. Upon the death of his indomitable, aged socialite aunt Mary, Duchess of Roxburghe (right), 80-year old TV personality and ertswhile host of ‘University Challenge’ Bamber Gascoigne ‘accidentally’ inherited the stately pile of West Horsley Place in Surrey. Once described by its […]

Monumental Blenko
BIG COLOR!

Blenko Big Color Glass

I’m a great fan of Blenko glass due to its stunning, vibrant colours and array of quirky forms. The pieces that attract me the most are the large floor decanters, with their voluptuous, sculptural curves and extravagently large stoppers. I’ve only been lucky enough to own one piece – the 22in (56cm) high Turquoise decanter […]