With nary a week in between, I have just got back from a trip up north to do the Antiques Roadshow in the sunny seaside resort of Blackpool. I arrived on Thursday afternoon to a tranquil town, and took a constitutional walk along the beach to the location – the legendary Blackpool Ballroom underneath the […]
Last month I was delighted to be asked by BBC Homes & Antiques magazine to write an article on postwar Czech glass design, a hot collecting area also known to collectors as ‘sklo’. The magazine’s photographers have really excelled themselves, and you’ll find a lavishly illustrated seven page article packed with useful information and tips. […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
…buy vintage! The market for vintage clothing has boomed over the past few years, even entering the ‘mainstream’ with high street stores such as TopShop and TopMan even stocking vintage lines. We’ve certainly become a lot more ‘individual’ in our tastes for interior decoration and the way we dress. One of the best sources I […]
It’s always nice to find out that friends are doing well, especially those that you have sadly lost touch with. Reading the ‘Style’ section of the Sunday Times over breakfast this morning, I spotted a large article on my old colleague and friend Sara Covelli. Sara, and her friend Janie Tennant, have founded Covelli Tennant […]
I’ve just got back from a fruitful day’s worth of photography for the next edition of the Miller’s Collectables Price Guide. Today I travelled to West London to visit the lovely Lesley of Retropolitan. We spent a fun and interesting day together chatting about favourite items and recent trends in the market. Of course, it […]
The next day began with a gentle walk around historic Gastown, and down to the harbour. Watching seaplanes take off and land made us curious and, before we knew it, the banker and I had booked ourselves in for a 20 minute airborn tour of the city and nearby mountains with Harbour Air Seaplanes. I’m […]