Have some fruit... there is plenty of it today! I am showing a stunning set of 10 plates made by Derby in about 1825 and painted by the famous porcelain decorator Thomas Steel. Thomas Steel (sometimes written as Steele) is considered the best early 19th Century porcelain painter of fruits. He was born in Staffordshire in 1772 and was first apprenticed by Wedgwood. He moved to Derby in 1815, where he became the foremost flower and fruit painter. In 1825 he moved on to Rockingh

In the run-up to the holiday season I am working my way through lots of exciting new stock, and many of the pieces I am adding are in the Imari style. People often ask me where it came from, so here goes... The Imari style is a Japanese style on porcelain from the Arita area. The Japanese exported lots of this to China and Europe from the 17th and 18th Century through exclusive trade links with China, Portugal and The Netherlands - as Japan was otherwise a reclusive country.

It is a wonderful autumnal day today - a bit grey, but the trees are starting to turn colour and the garden is a lovely mess of leaves, cobwebs full of busy spiders, berries, squirrels hiding their treasures everywhere, and my dahlias are in bloom. So today I pulled out a part-dessert service that is very special and that suits this season with its deep red borders. It was made by Derby between 1795 and 1800 and the stunning paintings are attributed to John Brewer. It can't b

Happy Autumn! (or, if you are down under, happy Spring!) I hope everyone has had a beautiful summer in spite of the weather and the many troubles the world is going through - we can always find beauty in something after all. I have been away on holiday and feel refreshed to pick up my blog and instagram, and bring lots of beautiful new porcelain to you. In my last blog, before disappearing on holiday, I showed you my column in Homes & Antiques about the Derby factory, and tod

In my monthly column in Homes & Antiques, the last two months I wrote about the emerging porcelain factories in Chelsea and Bow (both in London). This month I am moving further north to the beautiful small city of Derby. The Derby factory was intimately linked to Chelsea and Bow; it was inspired by them, became an important competitor, and eventually ended up buying them and using much of their expertise to create its famous, top quality porcelain. Derby took British porcelai

When we think about times past, we often think people didn't have much colour - perhaps because pictures are black and white, and many paintings we have seen are so dirty that colours don't come through clearly. But the fact is that particularly in the Regency era there was an explosion of colour.⁠ These stunning Bloor Derby vases show that. They are from between 1800 and 1825, but given the style, probably from around 1815 or 1820. They are decorated in the French style with

It is summer here and we are finally having some freedom again, so I am enjoying the rare opportunity to go places. I have been visiting several galleries that have been closed for most of the past year and half. This week it was the Wallace Collection at Hertford House in London. A beautiful grand house that hosts one of the world's best collections of Baroque and Rococo art. Four generations of the Lords Hertford and their final heir Richard Wallace, have been collecting th

When in the late 18th and early 19th Century excavations in Southern Italy, Greece and Turkey started to reveal the long forgotten ancient history of the Etruscans, Romans and Greeks, this was very inspiring to people in Northern Europe. After many centuries of dominance of the Christian Church, this was a whole new world opening up. Here was a world full of gods and goddesses who were full of life, flawed, and passionate (and much of the time up to no good!) like humans. Peo

Last month I wrote in Homes & Antiques about the Chelsea factory, and this month I am moving across London to Bow, its sister factory that was so different, yet so interlinked. It is also closer to home, as my stockroom is just a few miles up the river from Bow - if I lean out of my window I can see the site where all these beautiful items were produced more than 250 years ago! The Bow factory brought some very important innovations to British porcelain, and unlike Chelsea, w

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