The bottle of champagne I mentioned in my last entry has now finally sold – for £350! Congratulations Steve, I hope that you and your team have a great night out. I wonder if the lucky winner of the auction will be drinking it to toast his success? Good on him, whatever.
I’ve just got back from the BBC where I took part in an interview for BBC Radio 5 Live about the value of the large amount of Woolworths memorabilia that has come onto the market since the sad closure of the chain at the beginning of the year. The spark that set the market alight […]
I’ve just been sent this picture from a dear friend who spotted it in, weirdly, Woman’s Weekly. Seeing it instantly brought back floods of happy memories of working at Bonhams on Lot’s Road in Chelsea – my first proper job after university. It also made me giggle a bit, as my first boss Alexander Crum […]
You can’t have any more. They’re all gone! My very first publication, produced in association with the Graham Cooley Collection, has completely sold out. I’ve even sold the ‘seconds’ due to a rash of desperate requests over the past few weeks. The reason for this? Fat Lava has gone volcanic! It has appeared in all […]
Last week I was called by my friend and colleague on the Antiques Roadshow, Eric Knowles. On a recent trip to France to buy antiques and collectables for hit BBC TV series ‘Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is’, he picked up a little something that he thought had my name written all over it. […]
It seems I can’t get away from Czech things this year. Wandering through Shoreditch this weekend, a fantastic new discovery was made. Hidden between the usual cheapo take-away shops and newsagent is a small, anonymous door that leads into a dark and mysterious newspaper covered corridor leading to a stairwell. Curiously following these down takes […]
You know when you keep reading things about an area, and it looks like a ‘head of steam’ is rapidly building up? I think exactly this is happening with British metalware of the 1950s-70s. Interest in, and prices being paid for, exotic silver and gold pieces by the likes of Stuart Devlin and Gerald Benney […]
For those of your who are familiar with the excellent Crafts magazine, published by the UK’s national Crafts Council, check out this month’s issue. The eminent curator and 20thC design author and expert Lesley Jackson has written an eight page, fully illustrated preview of the forthcoming ‘Hi Sklo Lo Sklo’ Czech glass exhibition. Offering a […]
Just in case you were wondering, the copy of Hi Sklo Lo Sklo that I was selling for charity on eBay this week sold for twice its retail price – £40. What’s more, it sold to the Rakow Library, part of the world-famous Corning Museum of Glass in New York. Illustrious indeed! Do we think […]
Why, oh why, are people obsessed with adding a ‘z’ to a name to make something seem more fun, cool or zany? Annual accounts cannot and will not be made more fun just because the software package is called ‘Accountz’. When will they learn?!
No, I haven’t lost my mind, it’s the title of what is perhaps my favourite piece of music by avant garde contemporary classical composer Michael Nyman. I’ve been listening to Nyman’s music since I was 16, when my school friend Simon and I first encountered his work. Thinking back, we must have been odd kids, […]
Finally, it is done! My next bookalogue has gone off to the printers – at last. As I type, somewhere in Guangdong printing presses are furiously churning out 1,500 copies of what I hope will be an enjoyable read. It’ll certainly be informative – much of what is in here has not been seen since […]