This month my column at Homes & Antiques takes us to South Wales, where for a short but glorious period British porcelain making was perfected by the illustrious William Billingsley. The two Welsh factories, Swansea and Nantgarw (pronounced nant-GAR-oo), produced some of the finest porcelain ever made - only for a few short years roughly between 1814 and 1820. The Welsh wares are so rare and coveted that I have very few in my own collection; oh how I'd love to be able to purc

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

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