So, as you can see from my last blog post, our mid-century modern shopping excursions were both successful and enjoyable. Fair’s fair and, in return, the banker wanted to go ‘proper’ shopping. So we drove to the famed Aventura Mall, south of Fort Lauderdale. Billed as one of the biggest and best malls in the […]
As we didn’t manage a holiday this year, and Summer wasn’t exactly hot, the banker and I decided to cash in some air miles and spend New Year in the hot sun of Florida. When I take a holiday, it doesn’t usually take long for that ‘itch’ to set in and for me to start […]
Earlier on this year, I launched my fifth book on Caithness Glass. Once again, this accompanied a ground-breaking exhibition of glass from the Graham Cooley collection. The exhibition was launched in January at the renowned Broadfield House Glass Museum in Stourbridge, and Graham and I were delighted to welcome Emer OBroin, the daughter of the […]
Back in June, I was honoured to be asked to travel to Amsterdam to open an all-new exhibition dedicated to Fat Lava. The organisers, Kevin Graham of the Pottery & Glass Forum and Emiel Monnink of Retrominded, had done a wonderful job, with hundreds of different ceramics on display. Pieces ranged from the unique, such […]
On my way back to the ‘Big Smoke’ from filming at the West Sussex Roadshow a few weeks ago, I stopped off in Dorking, Surrey. Nestled beneath the South Downs, the town has always been known for its antiques centres and shops clustered along West Street. As I grew up nearby, it’s long been one […]
After returning from a great three days in York culminating in a fab retro and vintage find, it was straight into another retro event – the three-day extravaganza of Vintage London. Organised by design and fashion guru, and all-round cool guy, Wayne Hemingway, it aimed to celebrate ‘five decades of British cool’. And, boy, did […]
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 […]
If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll no doubt know that my partner and I are renovating a late Georgian house right now. it was quite a wreck when we bought it, and required considerable rebuilding. I won’t bore you with the details, but will simply say that a month or so ago we were […]
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 […]
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 […]