Innholdsfortegnelse for April 2021 i Homes & Antiques

Variety is the spice of life, to misquote William Cowper, and here at H&A we are fortunate that the world of antiques is nothing if not varied. From fine furniture and ceramics to scientific instruments and naive art, old things with interesting histories can be relied upon to add ‘flavour’, as Cowper would have it, not only to our lives, but to our homes as well. It is our fascination for the endless invention and diversity within each field of antiques that turns us into collectors. Take the humble butter mould, which we explore on page 107 – you buy one out of curiosity, intrigued by the carving of a cow, then you buy another because it bears the name of a farm in attractive lettering. Before long, you have…

Period oak furniture has been gaining momentum in recent years and is fetching good prices now. Oak has a wonderful quality to it, combining rich colour and prominent grain and this versatile style of furniture fits well with both traditional and contemporary interiors. With clean lines and minimal decorative detail, antique oak furniture sits beautifully against plain walls and stone floors. Good, practical pieces that have sold recently include an eight-to-10-seater oak gateleg dining table, c1700, which beat the £800 to £1,200 estimate to sell for £2,600, and a late 17th-century oak side table, which sold for £1,900 against an estimate of £300 to £500. An eminently practical mid 18th-century oak and mahogany housekeeper’s cupboard saw strong bidding too, selling for £850 against an estimate of £300 to £500.…

Every year I have to bet on The Grand National. It’s one of those yearly rites of passage. In England, the sport of kings has had its loyal adherents over the last 300 years and is, of course, inextricably linked with gambling. The development of the railways and invention of the telegraph allowed racing to become a national sport. By the late 19th century, it had become a popular obsession, both on the racecourse and in the parlour. The mechanical ‘Jeu de Course’ was a popular game in France enjoyed by gamblers at the turn of the century. Players cranked a handle and a carousel of colourful horses raced around a wooden case with a silver cup collecting the wagers. Some versions have elaborate Art Nouveau mounts and a patriotic…

• ‘It’s often said, but bears repeating: always buy something because you like it, rather than because it’s worth a lot of money. If you collect purely for investment you’re looking at it the wrong way.’ • ’As a collector you’re always learning and making mistakes – it’s part of the process.’ • ’I prefer to view things in person when possible – looking at the underside of something can reveal a lot about it. Two things can be almost identical but one has the edge.’ • ’When you’re buying furniture, surface colour and patina is everything and, if altered, the piece will have lost some of its integrity. I don’t mind modest damage.’ • ’At leading auction houses such as Sotheby’s, Bonhams, Christie’s and Dreweatts, specialists provide thorough descriptions…

At the start of 2020, Sarah-Jane Axelby’s prospects were bright. The former publisher was immersed in an interior design course at KLC in London. A colourful new career beckoned. Then came the pandemic and Sarah-Jane, who has Crohn’s disease, was forced to shield at home in Buckinghamshire. Panic set in, before her customary pragmatism took over. ‘Our internet’s so bad that it made studying online impossible, so I had to think again,’ she says. ‘I’ve never let my condition run my life. I didn’t want to look back at this mad time and think I’d achieved nothing.’ Putting the course on hold, Sarah-Jane, an art school graduate, resolved to set herself the challenge of ‘a sketch a day’. The subject matter was obvious. The weatherboarded, Grade II-listed home she shares…

English style rejoices in the unnecessary and decorative – ranked on mantelpieces and kitchen dressers, set out on window sills and side tables, arrayed on shelves behind the glass doors of cabinets, grouped on walls – collections of things, whether mochaware mugs or brass candlesticks, architectural prints or Delft tiles, all can be happily accommodated The urge to collect is universal, tapping into ancient hunter-gatherer instincts. Children collect conkers and particular kinds of toy. As adults, the urge to seek and acquire doesn’t necessarily fade, though the objects of desire tend to become more sophisticated. Collections are part of what make an English interior personal and expressive and, when they get out of hand, eccentric. Like pictures, books are a staple of English interiors, and have a place in every…

Snowshill Manor and Garden, Gloucestershire  nationaltrust.org.uk/ snowshillmanor-and-garden Head here to see a huge collection of butter moulds and stamps including one with a squirrel design, a rectangular one with ‘VALLEY FARM DAIRY’ carved into it and an ejector mould with a dainty strawberry plant pattern. Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery  birminghammuseums.org.uk The museum holds an impressive 8,044 items of treen from all over the world, including the important Pinto collection.…

Good as Gold I purchased this lovely piece of porcelain recently in a charity shop. Having done some pottery myself, I realised the quality of the workmanship. I would like to know the function of the piece and if it has a value (despite there being a small piece missing from one of the feet). Win Clason, by email It is rather lovely and a lucky find (I am not at all envious!) This is a Bough pot: a vessel often used to decorate a fireplace in the summer with stems of flowers and branches. Essentially it is a vase with small openings to the top. It is a term we rarely use now, but was very common in the 18th and 19th centuries. I suspect this was made at…

You don’t need a dedicated room to create a home office. If you do have one, you will have more flexibility with the space in terms of furniture and what can be included, but you can integrate furniture within other rooms to create the space you need just as easily. If you don’t have a dedicated room, you will need to find somewhere with sufficient space for a desk chair and some sort of desk. I would look for areas where electrical points can easily be accommodated. You can never have too many! Light or lighting is a consideration; a well-lit area especially with daylight can only be good for your wellbeing. I would also think about where you would most enjoy working – an area with lots of light,…

FAIRS AROUND THE UK NOTE please contact fair organisers or keep an eye on websites (see p139) and social media for updates regarding these events as they could be cancelled or postponed at any time. 4th The Giant Shepton Flea Market, Royal Bath & West Showground, Shepton Mallet, Somerset, BA4 6QN. 9.30am–4pm. £5. 01278 784912; sheptonflea.com 5th Vintage Market at the Mansion, Beckenham Place Mansion, Beckenham Place Park, London, BR3 1SY. 10am–4pm. Free. solastcenturyfair.co.uk 5th Malvern Flea & Collectors Market, Three Counties Showground, Malvern, Worcs, WR13 6NW. 7.30am–3.30pm. £5. 01636 676531; b2bevents.info 6th Sandown Antiques Home &  Interiors Fair, Sandown Park Racecourse, Portsmouth Road, Esher, Surrey, KT10 9AJ. 7am–1pm. Free. 01932 230946; sunburyantiques.com 7th Antiques & Home Show, Lincoln Showground, LN2 2NA. 10am–4pm. £5. 01298 27493; asfairs.com 8th–9th Newark International…

The Modern Marketplace While you wait for the wonderful Modern Shows to return to London, you can get your mid-century fix at The Modern Marketplace online directory, which is run by the organisers of these events. Mid-century dealers, designers and restorers who would usually appear at the fairs feature on here, and their latest pieces pop up for sale on the @midcentury_modern Instagram account. modernshows.com Modern Room Based in Bristol, this online store sells 20th-century furniture, lighting, objects and art with a focus on British modernist and post-war designs. Think 1951 Robin Day Orchestra chairs, 1930s bentwood Thonet chairs, and 1961 Robert Welch Alveston cutlery. @_modern_room; modernroom.co.uk Monument Store A stylish website featuring stunning pieces of vintage art and furniture. Studio pottery, 1970s Austrian alpine wood chairs, and Pastoe FM62…

‘I’ve been collecting since my late teens after reading the anti-war novel Death of a Hero by Richard Aldington (1929). This in turn led me to read up on the Jazz Age of the 1920s and discover the decorative arts and design of the inter-war period. I started buying Art Deco bric-à-brac from boot fairs and auctions around Banbury in Oxfordshire, where I grew up. One of the first objects I bought was a 1950 Bush TV12 bakelite television. ‘Now my collecting is clearly defined and much more selective – British industrial and German design from between the wars. Anything I buy I research, or I research first then buy. I have reappraised designers and makers such as the modernist furniture designer Denham Maclaren; the 1950s ceramics workshop Ehlers Pottery;…

Polly Eltes photographed ‘In Good Company’ Polly is a London-based photographer. She graduated through fine art and multi-media, to TV and film stills, fashion and personality portraits, then to a career in lifestyle photography. ‘I collect contemporary ceramics, often found through my work, because they are beautiful to arrange and look at as art, but you can also use them to make a cuppa or hold a bunch of flowers.’ Alison Snowdon replied in ‘Ask an Expert’ Alison is a ceramics and textiles specialist at Fieldings Auctioneers and answers your antiques queries on our ‘Ask an Expert’ pages. ‘I collect packaging tins and advertising dating from 1900 to 1945. I adore the typography, graphics, logos and colours. We have an Arts and Crafts house, so I can sneak…

Roll call The John Lewis design team has dipped into the company’s archive and produced a collection that revives wallcoverings from the 1800s and early 1900s. Designs have been redrawn and recoloured with a focus on greens and pinks, including myrtle and coral in this Henriette wallpaper in Fjord. From £40 per roll. johnlewis.com A DOG’S LIFE Antiques dealer and designer Christopher Howe has created luxurious dog beds for pampered pooches. There’s his ‘Dog-bed Settee’ based on an old example he spotted at Newark Park, as well as beds covered in vintage Swedish ticking. From £294. howelondon.com Home makers In the last year, many of us have been inspired to make and create – whether that’s quilts, baskets, embroidery, painting or knitting. Craft Mongers, the beautiful store based in Ashburton,…

• Choosing Keeping ‘It’s like a sweetie shop for artists with the most exquisite art materials ever. I have to limit my visits as I can spend a fortune. I use their paints and pretty embossed labels for posting work to clients every day.’ choosingkeeping.com • Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford. ‘I visit the hospital there regularly and always pop in even if I only have half an hour. Luckily for me I now know the wonderful staff there, so usually get whisked to the best bits and things hidden away in drawers. I love the way things are catalogued by material and I always find new treasure with fascinating stories.’ prm.ox.ac.uk • Shell Grotto, Margate. ‘Sunken under a housing estate, this underground network of tunnels adorned with shells is…

Emma and David Mann’s house in Hastings has both the feel of a quirky museum and that of a welcoming home. Visitors find it hard to decide between wandering the rooms gazing at the objects covering every surface or accepting the offer of a cup of tea and settling down by the fire. It was during a spur-of-the-moment visit to trawl the town’s plentiful junk shops over a decade ago that the couple noticed the area’s beautiful housing stock. A few months later they had swapped their small home in west London for a vast four-bedroom Victorian villa by the sea. ‘We love the proportions of the house,’ says David, and Emma adds that it was the 12ft ceilings and large rooms that really sold it. ‘We are so lucky…

Green Scene As the days get longer and the weather improves, an urge to refresh and renew our surroundings takes hold. Green tones inspire calm and remind us of nature, so it’s no wonder they are popular in interiors. We’ve all learnt the importance of self care over the last year so, if you’re planning a spring refresh, why not start by turning your bathroom into a peaceful green oasis? Here, walls are painted in Dulux Easycare in the appropriately named Wellbeing (£18.68 per l). Don’t forget the houseplants, too. dulux.co.uk Get the look If you love the look of a herringbone wooden floor in a kitchen, but balk at the thought of water stains and scratch marks, you might want to consider luxury vinyl planks instead. This Herringbone in…

Make a splash Bring exuberant colour and pattern to your dining table with handmade ceramics from Hot Pottery. Decorated with a traditional splatter design, these bowls and plates hail from Puglia in Italy. Prices from £12.50 for a nut bowl. hotpottery.co.uk Nancy Birtwhistle: my favourite culinary antique ‘My grandma gave me these kitchen scales when she realised that I was baking more than she was. And my earliest baking memories are of using them over 60 years ago. The scales aren’t expensive or of a high quality, but they’re rich in memories. They still have pride of place in my kitchen and I only stopped using them regularly when I started to work up recipes for Bake Off and needed accurate digital scales.’ Nancy is an author and winner of…

Raise a Glass My mother-in-law, Sylvia, is a subscriber to your magazine. The other day she showed me a small watercolour that she had found amongst a box of old postcards bought at a car boot sale. Sylvia has framed it herself and reproduced a note that was on the back, which said ‘From Stonehenge July 2nd 1921’. We don’t know who the artist is, but on July 2nd 2021 we intend to raise a glass of bubbly to them and wish the painting a happy 100th birthday! Stephen Newman, Merseyside Out of the Blue I have had your magazine for a number of years now and I feel it has really come into its own recently with the articles on antiques. My daughter also reads it and enjoys it.…

1 the ANTIQUE GROTESQUE SPOON WARMERS Small, easy to display and colourful, late 19th-century ‘grotesque’ ceramic spoon warmers are fun to hunt for. Toads are probably the most common form, inspired by their appearance in Japanese decorative art, but you’ll also find crocodiles, mythical dragons and winged creatures. Woolley & Wallis specialist Michael Jeffery often offers grotesques in his Arts & Crafts sale. ‘It’s likely that the first ceramic spoon warmers were made by the Martin Brothers around 1879–80,’ he says. ‘The toad was a shape that allowed them to create another form of grotesque evolving from the Wally bird jars they were making in the 1870s.’ Other potteries picked up the novel idea, particularly Bretby, Burmantofts and Brannam, and the popularity of the quirky dining wares reached their zenith…

Often overshadowed by better-known factories of the time, early 20th-century ceramics made at AE Gray’s pottery are so affordable that there is a piece for all pockets. Founded in 1907 in Stoke-on-Trent as a wholesaler of ‘useful ceramic items’, the pottery moved to production in 1912. Pieces by designers such as Susie Cooper and Gordon Forsyth (who both worked at the factory in the 1920s) often command into the high hundreds of pounds, but floral and abstract pieces by fellow designers Dorothy Tomes and Sam Talbot, who worked there in the 1930s, are still very affordable.…

What is your background? We’ve both always been creative and met at university in London while I was studying photography. I then went on to work in furniture and prop hire, servicing the TV, film and fashion industries. Hannah was studying journalism, which led to a writing career in fashion. When and why did you launch your business? Sourcing from flea markets and antiques shops for our own home has always been top of our travel itinerary. This passion naturally progressed into collecting and, in turn, selling. We launched our website in June 2019, shortly before doing our first mid-century design fair. What do you sell? We tend to choose items that evoke a sense of warmer climes. Expect chic, French mid 20th-century design, alongside African tribal art and 19th-century…

Barrister Phillip Lucas was at home in Spitalfields – that tiny but beautiful oasis of Georgian architecture in the heart of London – when his collection of antique furniture, art and objects came up for sale last December. Sitting snug inside the 1725 silk merchant’s house, a keen sense of anticipation settled over him. ‘I couldn’t be at the Dreweatts sale because of the pandemic and I thought I wouldn’t watch it online because I had a mountain of paperwork to get through. But I kept having a look. And, as the lots went under the hammer, it felt exciting, not sad, to let these things go. I’d enjoyed them and now I could find something else to buy. As a collector you have to enable change or you stagnate.’…

When Coral Miles watches television programmes like Escape to the Chateau, she can’t help smiling. ‘That has always been my life,’ she says, explaining that, as a child, her family moved to France when her parents bought an old convent in Brittany. In the years that followed, her mother Lesley went on to restore several more houses in Brittany and elsewhere in France, including Paris and the Loire Valley. Then, 15 years ago, she and Coral found this atmospheric manor house in the Loire, which was built in the 1850s. Once a grand nobleman’s house, it had fallen into disrepair after years of inheritance disputes. ‘It was a rare opportunity to restore a traditional house with really beautiful features,’ Coral explains, adding that some of those features are even older…

‘I was writing about black people’s lives, music and poetry, and I wanted to find beautiful images that tied in with that work. That’s how my collection began’ Although Pamela Nestor lives alone, she is never short of company. The walls of her north London home are alive with vintage chalkware plaques, mostly of African heads, and tables and window sills are filled with freestanding statues and busts. Pamela has been collecting these expressive heads and figures since the 1990s, when she took a break from a successful career as a singer and songwriter (she toured with the musical Hair and later worked in partnership with Joan Armatrading) in order to pursue ‘the academic side of life’. This eventually led to a PhD in literature from London University. ‘When I…

KITCHEN FIND A late 19th-century 51cm long tin-lined copper pan, possibly a fish kettle, bears the name ‘Carridin’, probably the maker. Estimate £80–£120 SMART SURVIVOR Reupholstered in pale green silk damask, this compact French Empire chaise longue dates to the early 19th century. Estimate £400–£600 BLOOMSBURY CONNECTION An oval pottery charger featuring a swirling mermaid and a male figure was made by Quentin Bell, the son of artist Vanessa Bell. Estimate £500–£700…

• Ensure you approach a knowledgeable, reputable organisation for valuation advice. • Give the valuer a detailed description of the item, including close-up photos if it’s not a face-to-face valuation. • Getting more than one valuation is a good idea if you want additional assurance of an item’s value. • Keep a record of all valuations. This will help to build a complete history of your collection and may be useful for future owners. • Antique values change over time so consider getting your antiques valued every few years to see how the market is fluctuating – especially important if you’re looking to find an optimal time to sell.…

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Venison in white wine Mrs Bennet’s haunch of venison shows her guests that she has friends with a deer park and a good cook who knows the trick – a flour and water paste – to keep it moist as it roasted on the spit. Even without these advantages, we can enjoy this simple and deeply savoury recipe for ‘a piece of Stag’s Flesh’. 700g cubed stewing venison (or use boned leg or shoulder and cut it into chunks) Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper 6 thick rashers streaky bacon 1/2 bottle white wine 150ml stock or water 1/2 tsp grated nutmeg 2–3 bay leaves Bouquet garni Couple of pieces of lemon zest, pith removed Beurre manié: 1 tsp butter and 1 tsp flour blended to a paste 1…

9th–11th The Dorset Brocante @thedorsetbrocante; thedorsetbrocanteonline.co.uk HOW TO SHOP: The brocante will open at 7pm on Friday and will close at 7pm on Sunday. When the event opens you will be able to view all the exhibitors in one place on The Dorset Brocante website. They are listed in categories to make it easier for shoppers to find what they are looking for. Simply click on to each exhibitor to reach their gallery of products. From there you can follow the link to their individual website or online store to buy from them. 11th & 25th So Last Century Virtual Vintage Fair 2pm (lasting 24 hours) @solastc; solastcenturyfair.co.uk HOW TO SHOP: Simply tune into So Last Century on Instagram from 2pm onwards and tap the stories button (the…

Adams Antiques Fairs, London 020 7254 4054; adamsantiquesfairs.com; @adamsantiquesfairs The Antiques Dealers Fair Limited Organisers of: The Mayfair Antiques & Fine Art Fair and The Petworth Park Antiques & Fine Art Fair. 01797 252030; adfl.co.uk; @adflfairs Art & Antiques for Everyone, Birmingham  antiquesforeveryone.co.uk; @aafefairs Arthur Swallow Organisers of: Lincoln Antiques and Home Show and a vintage flea market at Lincolnshire Showground, as well as large outdoor antiques and salvage shows at Ripley Castle, Cheshire Showground, Loseley Park in Surrey and Beale Park in Berkshire. 01298 27493; asfairs.com; @asfairs B2B Events Organisers of: Malvern Flea in Worcestershire, held nine times a year, as well as antiques fairs and markets in Detling, Malvern and Edinburgh. 01636 676531; b2bevents.info; @b2beventsfairs Clarion Events Organisers of: The Art & Antiques Fair Olympia in June and…

“I adore bamboo chairs and having purchased a set just before lockdown it feels a bit more poignant when I look at this one. I found them through trawling of online auction sites, which is a habit of mine late at night! I had a beautiful cushion made specially to make this chair inherently more usable. In my own room designs for Salvesen Graham, I use a combination of antiques. I’m inspired by the period of the home, the client’s existing pieces and the general aesthetic. I like to mix periods to help a room feel authentic. If you are dipping your toe into furnishing a room with antiques, my advice is to go for simple shapes and avoid woods that look orange. Also, think about any restoration costs as…