In these post-pandemic days we have never seen so much interest in "tablescaping": the setting of a beautiful table to serve food to your friends and loved ones. If you've been following me for a while you'll know that I have always have a weakness for beautiful tableware, and I love nothing more than to find a good home for an English porcelain dessert service. Dinner parties Dinner parties became a huge rage in the late 18th and early 19th Century, thanks to, on the one han

This week, let's have a look at the sucrier: that beautiful and indispensable part of the early 19th Century tea service. A sucrier is a sugar pot, usually with a cover. The word is French (sucre is French for sugar). Every tea service had a rather large sucrier with it; many have gone their separate ways and are now on the market just by themselves. And why not? They are so beautiful and if you find them too big for sugar, they are good for little scones, biscuits or sweets,

Recently I came across a wonderful pair of Derby figures that have now flown off to a new home... but I still wanted to show them to you. Juno and Jupiter, made in about 1760, ride through the clouds at full speed in their chariots, their garments fluttering behind them, their well-built bodies full of energy, their faces enlivened by their adventurous journey. These two figures were made at a time when Derby figures were particularly beautiful; the glaze translucent, the col

Today I am introducing a very special and rare set of three vases, or garniture, made by Royal Worcester in the years 1872 and 1873. It has two square tall vases and one moon flask in the Aesthetic Movement style, inspired by the Japanese Satsuma style. The vases have gorgeous surface moulded images of the various stages of ceramic production, shaped by master modeller James Hadley and painted by the equally famous porcelain painter and gilder James Callowhill. A set of these

This month in Homes & Antiques I am taking you to Shropshire (called Salop in those days), just over the border with Staffordshire, where two brothers named John and Thomas Rose made history building their potteries along the banks of the new canal at Coalport. John Rose had trained at Caughley, already a famous pottery in Shropshire. He ended up buying it and turning it into his own business that would later become known as "Coalport". His brother Thomas built a factory just