You had to go without a blog post last week as I was on holiday in Cornwall... but while there I came across something interesting. You will often have seen the mention of "acanthus" shapes in neo-Classical porcelain design of the early 19th Century. It was a very popular detail in design, inspired by the Greek, Roman and Etruscan art that became fashionable at the time. Acanthus is a plant that grows in the Mediterranean Basin and in Asia, and I had never seen a wild one in

This last month has been full of great sporting tournaments: the European football title, the Wimbledon tennis tournament, and of course the Tour de France, an epic cycling race all around France. Earlier this week the cyclists went past the city of Toulouse in the south of France, so I thought it fitting to show our very own Tour de France in porcelain: a set of Coalport plates from 1844 that are attributed to a painter called John Toulouse. Toulouse was a painter at the Coa

It is that time of the month; you can now read my latest column in Homes & Antiques, called "Made in Chelsea". This month I am writing about the first well-organised large porcelain factory in Britain: Chelsea Porcelain, and how an ambitious and talented Walloon immigrant called Nicholas Sprimont shaped the beginnings of British porcelain. One of the things I find fascinating in researching the journey of British porcelain is the rich mix of European and English styles, and a

You may know that I love a good porcelain figure... not the gaudy figures that you can find in a charity shop, but the true masterpieces made in the 18th Century by Bow, Chelsea or Derby. Because there are so many bad imitations around we have been conditioned to discard them as kitsch, but if you look closely at the masterpieces you will see that they are far from kitsch: they have an innocence and strength about them that is moving. And they were made so well, particularly