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

To me, nothing is as uplifting as spending time around a beautiful table with friends and loved ones... well today I have a really gorgeous table for you.⁠ This fantastic set of dessert plates and dishes was made by Derby between about 1815 and 1820 and it was made in the neo-classical style. This style was inspired by the excavations of the Classical and pre-Classical treasures in southern Europe. This particular pattern looks very much like the gracious Etruscan style with

Don't we all love a good sale? To celebrate the summer solstice and to clear my shelves we are putting on a huge Summer Sale - FOR 3 DAYS ONLY. All items will be 30% off - 3 DAYS ONLY 165 items on sale! Sale starts Saturday 18 June 0:00am and finishes Monday 20 June 11:59PM BST And why clear my shelves? We have some exciting plans for this year so creating some space both on my shelves and in my head will help those plans along. So FOR 3 DAYS ONLY you can get those items you'

The Coalport factory made a huge variety of styles and items, but one thing they really excelled at was flower paintings. Thanks to John Rose, the founder of the factory, who patiently cultivated a large team of exceptionally talented painters, the flower painting tradition at Coalport became very strong and it was therefore always an attractive factory to work for - as an artist you could be sure there would be plenty of interesting work. One of the best painters was William

Last month, in my column in Homes & Antiques, we looked at the genius of Josiah Wedgwood, the modest potter who transformed Staffordshire. This month we look at his contemporary and namesake: Josiah Spode, whose son was also called Josiah. If you read this blog you will know about Spode, one of the greatest potters of the 19th and 20th Centuries. The story of how this factory came into being is very interesting, as is the time this took place in; the Industrial Revolution gav

This week I am asking your help! And of course also showing you a fantastic piece of porcelain. Here you see a pair of sublimely made potpourri vases in the Rococo Revival style, made in about 1835. Potpourri vases have perforated covers and although you can of course take the covers off and use them for flowers, they were originally meant to be filled with dried and scented fruits and seeds; this is called potpourri. Georgian and Victorian homes could get quite stuffy with a

Nothing cheers me up as much as a beautifully laid table. A table laid with care, with well made dishes, glasses and cutlery, is the setting for a beautiful meal. And did you know that one of the most important hormones for our mental wellbeing, oxytocin, is generated while eating together? That's why meals are such a cornerstone of our mental health; and friendships, love and business have always happened over meals. Today I am showing you a wonderful dessert service that I

When I see Bow figures, I find them hard to resist. Often the ones I find are so banged up or badly restored that I can't really get involved in buying them... but these two beauties passed the test!⁠ Meet Arlecchino and Columbina, two figures of the Commedia dell'Arte, an Italian comical theater that inspired the English Punch & Judy. Although a whole lot more sophisticated than that... no endless fistfights but rather a musical serenade by bagpipes and hurdy gurdy.⁠ ⁠ What

It's that time of the month - my next column in Homes & Antiques has come out, and this time it is about a revolutionary man who changed the course of Staffordshire, and, in some way, probably the world: Josiah Wedgwood. I have not traded a lot of Wedgwood items in my career as a porcelain trader, but am now thinking I probably should! Not only made Wedgwood many amazing items in various forms of china, the man Josiah himself was an extraordinary person who changed a lot in t

Time for a splendid lunch in the garden...? Today we are looking at this stunning dessert service. In the early 1900s there were as many of 300 potteries in Staffordshire alone, and many are not very well known. One pottery that deserves a lot more attention than it usually gets is Machin. Machin & Co was in operation between 1812 and 1830 and made lots of pottery (earthenware) and also very high quality porcelain. As this was not a very long period and they didn't mark their