Latest Articles
Dutch Tiles
Many collectors probably consider tiles to be rather like pretty pictures because they are so pleasing on the eye. Small in size, they are often beautifully painted with picturesque subjects. In reality, however, tiles were never intended as pictures, nor were they made as individual pieces...
03 January, 2005
New Hall Porcelains c 1782-1835
Over the last 100 years the so-called "New Hall" porcelains have received a very mixed press! It was once thought that these Staffordshire porcelains were naively and sparsely painted with simple floral designs and were devoid of gilding...
03 January, 2005
A Variety of Objects from Tools to Art: A Template for Collectors
From the instant we reach out of bed to quell the morning alarm clock to the moment we turn off the bedside lamp, each one of us enjoys deliberate, yet scarcely regarded, relationships with a wide variety of things. These things are neither parts of ourselves, nor other living beings. They are inanimate objects. These objects make possible the lives we lead, whether we are hunter-gatherers or software designers...
02 January, 2005
Americans in Britain: Portraits of Americans in The National Portrait Gallery
One of the many things I like about the National Portrait Gallery in London (America, of course, has its own version of a national pantheon) is that it is national without being too nationalistic...
02 January, 2005
The Extraordinary Story of the Legendary Prague Collector Rudolf Just
The last work by the English writer Bruce Chatwin, published shortly before his death in 1989, was a short novel about an obsessive collector of Meissen porcelain in Prague. "Utz" is a lyrical account of the life of the eponymous collector and his obsession with 18th century Meissen porcelain figures, of which he amasses a huge collection that fills his tiny apartment...
02 January, 2005