3 August 2017
While considerable evidence, such as insurance records, bills (perhaps matched to surviving furniture), letters, rate books and, sometimes, personal accounts, exists for the activities of larger cabinet-making firms, day-to-day records for smaller, more general workshops are far scarcer. Thus, it…
Read More...12 July 2017
Although, for now, the precise origins of this remarkable and perhaps unique masterpiece remain unknown, it is clearly an exceptional work by a talented designer and maker, and was surely commissioned for the grandest of interiors. Since this seemingly unique…
Read More...29 March 2017
For many years now, there has been a perception that so-called ‘traditional areas’ under the umbrella of the ‘decorative arts’ have fallen from favour. But what does this mean? Is this a reference to the market, or to public appreciation?…
Read More...6 March 2017
We spent an enjoyable weekend unpacking a truck-full of crates, each revealing a piece of furniture, an object or a picture, soon to be placed or hung on our expanded Maastricht stand. Thanks as ever to Aston Spinks (see below)…
Read More...18 January 2017
On Tuesday morning, so far spared the traditional Winter Antiques Show snow, we arrived at the nonetheless frigid Armory. Our shippers battled the mêlée of ‘troublesome trucks’ jockeying for position on a gridlocked Lexington Avenue. But, without the slightest hint…
Read More...12 December 2016
During a recent visit to Salisbury, I took some time to enjoy the magnificent cathedral. Walking past the north transept, my eye was caught by a life-size seated figure. On inspection this turned out to be a funerary monument to…
Read More...10 November 2016
C.F.A Voysey’s armchair, with a heart-shape in the back, is one of his most recognisable designs. The armchair with rush seat (above) is a close variant of this widely published model, which is itself known in various forms; see, for…
Read More...7 November 2016
As was acknowledged during their lifetimes, the crucial relationship between the fabulously wealthy patron and collector Alfred Morrison (1821-97), and the supremely talented enamel artist Charles Lepec (1830-90), led to much of Lepec’s artistic output, during the 1860s, finding a…
Read More...27 May 2016
According to the entirely justified headline to an online article in Apollo, ‘Antique ivory poses no threat to elephant conservation: in fact, it needs protection itself’ (see here). We all love elephants, and who brought up on Jean de Brunhoff’s Babar (below)…
Read More...17 May 2016
Just back from Chicago, where I was kindly invited to speak to the Antiquarians at the Art Institute of Chicago, on ‘Alfred Morrison (1821-97): an overlooked patron and collector of decorative arts’. This remarkable maecenas lived in Carlton House Terrace,…
Read More...19 April 2016
23 April 2016 marks the four hundredth anniversary of William Shakespeare’s death. Shakespeare (1564-1616) is revered as the greatest figure in English literature. Although long admired, it was not until the Great Shakespeare Jubilee arranged in 1769 by the actor…
Read More...7 March 2016
Time is rapidly running out to find a solution for the Judges’ Lodgings Museum in Lancaster, and its renowned collection of furniture by Gillows, the ‘Northern Powerhouse’ cabinet-maker. Against the brutal background of cuts to local authority budgets, Lancashire County…
Read More...3 February 2016
A long stay on the East Coast for the Winter Antiques Show began with a day in Washington. It seems that fatigue is casting a shadow over many of the groups involved in the battle to retain the free movement…
Read More...19 January 2016
The year is barely three weeks old, but here we all are, back in New York for the Winter Antiques Show. This long running fair, established in 1955, supports the East Side House Settlement, which was itself founded in 1891….
Read More...6 January 2016
Since 2013, Mark Westgarth, based at the University of Leeds, has been investigating ‘Antique Dealers: the British Antiques Trade in the 20th Century’. This project grew out of his earlier work that culminated in A Biographical Dictionary of Nineteenth Century…
Read More...19 November 2015
Lost works of art are sometimes hidden in plain sight. Such is the case with a magnificent chandelier that undoubtedly once hung at Thomas Hope’s Duchess Street mansion in London, and later at his country house the Deepedene, Dorking, Surrey….
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