Produced in conjunction with BBC2’s exciting new series, Cracking Antiques shows you how vintage and antique furniture and accessories can help you to create a stylish, individual home without setting foot inside a superstore. Take antiques off their pedestal and forget their elitist image. You don’t need to live in an old house to enjoy […]
I love a good fair, especially those run by Specialist Glass Fairs. The dynamic duo behind the rapidly expanding portfolio are delighted to announce an all-new fair to be held at Dulwich College in South London on Sunday 28th March. To be held in the beautiful and aptly Modernist style Christison Hall from 10.30am until […]
Yesterday I was honoured to be asked onto BBC Radio 4’s ‘Woman’s Hour’, to speak about Jessie Tait and her 1950s-70s designs for Midwinter. I was accompanying Professor Cheryl Buckley, who had been lucky enough to meet Tait herself during her research into the role of woman designers in the ceramics industry. If you want […]
Cracking Antiques is on a myth-busting mission to prove that people can add style and glamour to any type of home by investing in second-hand, vintage and antique furnishings – without breaking the bank. The prime-time series, coming to BBC Two from April 7th at 8.30pm is presented by interior designer Kathryn Rayward and antiques […]
Just imagine walking home on a wet and windswept evening balancing an umbrella and your bag precariously as you try to shelter from the elements. You just want to get home, shove the umbrella in its stand, make a warm cup of tea and dry out. Just imagine if that neglected ‘umbrella stand’ turned out […]
Very early one cold, windy and rainy morning this Autumn, I found this vase at a fair in the South of England. Against the grey day, it did rather stand out. I automatically presumed it was postwar Italian from fifty paces, so honed in to have a closer look. Whilst it looked like the type […]
Tipped off by a good friend who knows how I like to spot things I’m interested in on TV, I watched a couple of episodes of the very amusing new BBC Two comedy ‘Miranda’ last night. And sure enough, the Fat Lava vases I was promised were there. The series details the haphazard and hilarious […]
Back in January, I was delighted to come across my friend and old Sotheby’s colleague Sara Covelli and her new business Covelli Tennant. This week another one of my old friends and erstwhile colleagues at Sotheby’s, James Bridges of Martel Maides in Guernsey, hit the news. Undertaking a house contents valuation for a Channel Islands […]
I’ve just got back from the fantastic Bygone Times, in Eccleston, near Chorley in Lancashire. This really is one of my favourite places in the entire country to visit. Two truly enormous warehouses literally crammed with everything from Georgian to modern await you – with prices from as little as a pound or two. The […]
Our first stop was the capital city of Beijing, known as Peking until the Revolution in 1949. After a recouperative night’s sleep following the 9 hour flight from London, I set off mid-morning to enormous Panjiayuan antiques market in the south east of the city. Although many flea markets are overrun with tourists, particularly in […]
This month’s BBC Homes & Antiques magazine is even more than packed than ever with inspirational and practical information about collecting and living with antiques and collectables. In this month’s issue, insiders reveal their ‘trade secret’ favourite hunting grounds, be they antiques centres, specialists, auctions or junk shops. I was delighted to be asked to […]
Having seen so many prehistoric, neolithic and paleolithic designs on modern ceramics and glass, I’ve often wondered how much these were inspired and driven by the discovery of some caves. In Summer 1940, four French teenagers out walking their dog in the Dordogne discovered a cave, the walls of which were covered with prehistoric cave […]