WriteAntiques

Up until the Regency period, ladies secured their hats – usually sensible affairs with tasteful frills – with ribbons, those imported from France being considered the most fetching.
In the 1820s and 30s, hats were still of a manageable size and small decorative hatpins were used unobtrusively to keep them in place.
But by the late Victorian period, hats began to grow, eventually to gargantuan proportions.
Two things quickly became vital additions to a woman’s wardrobe: one was sufficient hair – either her own or someone else’s in the form of a wig – with which to support the hat, the other, long hatpins with which to secure it.

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A chance find at a car boot sale is set to hit the jackpot for a couple after auctioneers valued their £2 bargain at £1,000 or more.

“The little ceramic wall plaque was lying in the grass underneath one stall and my husband walked past without giving it a second glance,” said the woman, a local government officer who asked not to be named.

“I was following on behind and it caught my eye when I looked down, so I picked it up. I didn’t think much of it at first, but when I turned it over, I saw the name ‘PenDelfin’

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Thomas Stevens of Coventry, was a silk manufacturer, whose idea of producing them saved his entire workforce from penury. Over the years until about 1938 literally hundreds of the so-called Stevengrahps were produced, featuring every subject imaginable.

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So, farewell then wonderful Wedgwood (at least in the form we know it today). You will be sorely missed … Last week, and with virtually the same words, this column mourned the passing of Woolworths.
Now another great institution is on the ropes. Venture capitalists circle over the Barlaston works, enticed by Receivers who will be the only winners in the game, while a talented workforce of Staffordshire potters nervously awaits its fate.
Founded by the great Josiah in 1759, Wedgwood once produced wares that everyone wanted to buy from Catherine the Great to people like my parents who just wanted a smart Sunday best teaset. Not any more it seems.

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The 1890s saw a renaissance in Barcelona, the Catalonian city becoming a centre for avant-garde art with its own version of Art Nouveau, which was turned Modernisme. At around the same time, a jeweller named Lluis Masriera – the creator of these jewels – was about to burst onto the scene. The third generation of a family of jewellers – his grandfather, Josep, had founded the business in 1839 – Masriera was truly gifted.

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Homemaker pottery was once made for the masses and sold cheaply by Wooliworths both in the U.S. and UK.

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