Last week was a busy one again – just how I like it. Wednesday saw me travel up to York to attend the Antiques Roadshow in the city’s ‘Museum & Gardens’ the next day. As ever, we were packed out, it was great fun, and some super treasures were found and filmed. The picture above […]
One of the many joys about working on the Collectables and Miscellaneous tables on the Antiques Roadshow is that you never know what the next person in the queue will have. It could, quite literally, be anything – it’s a little like Christmas! At Seaton Delaval (above) last week, I saw something that I thought […]
I’ve been a Freeman of the Guild of Arts Scholars, Dealers & Collectors for a couple of years now. A charitable organisation formed as part of the City of London’s ancient network of professional guilds and livery companies, its aim is to promote the study, curation, collection and trade in antiques, antiquities, decorative arts and […]
On Thursday I attended what must have been one of the busiest Antiques Roadshows I’ve experienced since Hopetoun House. Our location was the beautiful country house Hartland Abbey (above), near Bideford in North Devon. The abbey was built in 1157, and was the last monastery to be dissolved by Henry VIII, in 1539. Its royal […]
I’m delighted that my new Caithness Glass book has received some great reviews lately. Lesley Jackson, the eminent design historian, curator, and author, has just reviewed it for the Crafts Council‘s prestigious ‘Craft’ magazine and said ‘”Mark Hill has done the design world a valuable service in recording the history of Caithness Glass and the […]
One of the great delights of the recent Fat Lava exhibition in Amsterdam (a blog entry is on its way) was putting faces to names of many fellow collectors who I’ve got to know over the years via email. Once such collector is Els van Petersen. Els and I first got in contact when I […]
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 […]
The clever, or observant, amongst you will have noticed that 2011 is the 60th anniversary of the Festival of Britain. A landmark event that buoyed up the nation after the war, it celebrated our culture, developments in technology, manufacturing and design, and looked forward to ‘the world of tomorrow today’. The main event was held […]
Since Graham Cooley and I launched the first ‘Fat Lava’ exhibition and bookalogue in 2006, West German pottery has gone global. We certainly weren’t the first to appreciate this quirky and often much-maligned pottery from the 1960s & 70s, but the combined event crystalised the market, which has grown and grown like Flopsy since then. […]
If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll no doubt have seen that I’m involved in the renovation of a late Georgian house in London right now. Although we’re not at the stage where we’re putting it back together yet, if I was I know where I’d be going for architectural features such as cornices, fireplaces, […]
Working with antiques, vintage and retro, it’s all too easy to forget the artists, artisans and crafts people of today. Their work will become the antiques of tomorrow, and there’s no better time to learn about their work than now – because one can find out about their journey, inspirations and techniques as they happen, […]
The popular seaside town of Brighton is well known as being both funky and fashionable, with a strong retro and vintage trend. It’s packed with a variety of great shops from Snooper’s Paradise, The North Laine Antiques & Flea Market, and In My Room in the North Laines, to Brighton Flea Market and InRETROspect in […]