Most luckenbooth brooches sold today are heart-shaped with a crown above. Sometimes the design is a pair of interlocking twin hearts. But it wasn’t always so. This kind of traditional Scottish brooch could be a very simple outline heart, as you can see in some museums. So don’t take it as a rule that only [more...]
Food served with a cold spoon may cool down too quickly for some tastes. Even worse, a dish with rich, fatty gravy may congeal unappealingly on its way to your plate. A decorative container filled with hot water to keep serving spoons and sauce ladles warm seemed like the perfect solution in Victorian Britain. The [more...]
The recent theft of paintings from the Paris Museum of Modern Art which included works by Picasso and Matisse, will concern all gallery owners and private collectors. Stolen works of art and antiques often disappear never to be seen again, or if they do re-emerge, it is often several years later. In an attempt to [more...]
Imagine your social club has to meet in secret because it’s affiliated with a banned political party. This was roughly the situation facing the 18th century Jacobites: supporters of the Stuart royal dynasty whose ancestors had sat on the throne in London before falling out of favour. Despite the risk of being arrested for treason, [more...]
In the 1890s tearooms flourished all over the UK, and nowhere more than in Glasgow. There you would find several city centre premises with a choice of rooms for customers taking tea – including separate rooms for ladies and gentlemen, and smoking rooms. Those managed by the enterprising Miss Cranston, who asked designer-architect Charles Rennie [more...]
A hong bowl is a punch bowl made in China for the export trade, originally in the 18th century, when European countries established trading posts in China. Back then, such a trading post was called a factory, in Chinese, hong. The factories didn’t produce anything but were rather the base of the factor: the agent, [more...]
Many nicely-crafted antique card tables were made in the 1700s and 1800s. The social lives of prosperous families in America, Britain, and other parts of Europe depended on having a card table, or two, for friends to play at in the evening. Before 1700, card-playing was a rich person’s game. It stayed fashionable with the [more...]
Travellers to South America in the 1800s brought flowers made from feathers home to Europe or the USA. Feather flowers were displayed in the London Great Exhibition of 1851, and over the next few years instructions for making your own appeared in various ladies’ magazines. The Victorians had a taste for novelty crafts that ornamented [more...]
If you were bereaved in the 1800s, your clothes and jewels had to be black for a period of mourning, the length depending on whether you were widow, daughter, sister etc. Apart from the usual gold and silver settings, mourning jewellery was made of black jet – a “stone” derived from coal - onyx, black [more...]
The history of Delft tiles goes back to the early 1600s when blue and white porcelain from China first arrived in the Netherlands. It was much admired and Dutch potters wanted to imitate the look, even though they couldn’t recreate true Chinese porcelain. Potteries in Delft had more success than others with good quality blue [more...]
Chinoiserie was a new fashion in the 18th century when China and the Far East seemed incredibly exotic to people in Europe. Imported arts and crafts had an excitingly different beauty from those made at home, and some were clearly superior to anything European – especially Chinese porcelain. Designers and craftsmen wanted to recreate the [more...]
Famille rose decoration for porcelain developed in China around 1720. A new wave of Chinese ceramics using rose and ruby shades in multi-colour designs was greatly admired in Europe. Introduced just before the western craze for oriental style interior decoration peaked in the mid-18th century, plenty was manufactured for export, along with many other Asian [more...]
Josiah Wedgwood was not only an innovator in ceramic techniques and design, he was also a managing director who insisted on high standards, and promoted his products energetically. In 1759 he founded an enterprise producing good quality, desirable tableware and ornamental ceramics that suited the fashions of the time. Born into a family of potters, [more...]
Jasper dip and solid jasper are two different kinds of Wedgwood jasperware. Both have white classical designs on a coloured background, and look similar to non-experts. If in doubt you are always safe calling this style of pottery jasperware. Solid jasper came first. After secret experiments in the early 1770s, blending clays with other ingredients, [more...]
Chinese porcelain seemed fine, white and desirable to 18th century Europe, and it inspired skilled western potters to develop their own versions of porcelain. Others worked on more affordable earthenware, trying various clay and flint blends in the search for pale, creamy colours. This new creamware was developed during the mid-1700s. One of the most [more...]
Pot Lids, or to give them their proper title “under glaze multicoloured printing in ceramic wares”, have been collected from the very first time they were made in the mid-Victorian period. The term pot lids is a generic term. Initially it meant lids that went on pots which contained all manner of products: bear’s grease, [more...]
Toby jugs portray a character whose story is rather unclear. He reminds some people of Shakespeare’s jovial, disreputable Toby Belch, and he very likely has something to do with an old song about Toby Fillpot. Dear Tom, this brown jug that now foams with mild ale, (In which I will drink to sweet Nan of [more...]
If you have a nice caddy to store tea, you may also want a caddy spoon. In the early years of tea drinking in Europe and America, the lid of the caddy was often used for measuring out tea leaves, but in the 1760s people started to use special silver spoons instead, with short handles [more...]
Tea first arrived in Europe from Asia in 1610, when Dutch traders brought some back to the Netherlands. It reached England in the 1640s and soon became a fashionable drink in London, but it was not yet made at home. If you wanted to drink it in private you had to order a cup from [more...]
Until the 18th century ladies used to keep their needlework projects in a work-basket or bag. Then furniture designers started to create elegant little tables for the drawing room with a silk work-bag or box-holder hanging beneath. You have only to look at one to understand why Sheraton, the famous cabinet-maker, called his designs pouch [more...]