I’M NOT sending any Christmas cards this year. Not only do they cost a fortune,  considering they’re just bits of folded card, but with the added cost of the postage, I decided to save my money.

Instead, my New Year resolution is to add to my collection of Victorian Christmas cards, some of which are pictured here.

Click here for a Christmas card slideshow

Some friends of ours have a lovely Christmas tradition of their own. Instead of sending their family members a new Christmas card each year, the same small collection of "antique" cards gets circulated among them, each person receiving a different one than the previous year.

Rather than being chucked into the waste recycling bin, or chopped up to make gift tabs (which is another useful money-saving tip) our friends’ vintage cards are carefully stored away for a year and then brought out to be posted again for a new round of festive cheer.

I’m afraid I wouldn’t risk the hazards of the postal service. Not that vintage Christmas cards

are expensive, generally speaking. For a few pounds it’s more than possible to pick up any number of cards dating from the late Victorian and early Edwardian era.

Admittedly, some of the earliest and grandest are more expensive, but few break into three figures. None of the cards in my own little collection cost more than £15.

We have Sir Henry Cole, the first director of London’s Victoria and Albert Museum, to thank for producing the first commercially printed Christmas card.

It was designed by John C. Horsley and its popularity following its launch in the Christmas of 1843 was boosted by the advent of the postage stamp and Sir Rowland Hill’s "Penny Post" three years earlier.

Horsley’s card was engraved with the scene of a family enjoying Christmas lunch, surrounded by vignettes of charitable acts such as feeding and clothing the poor. The greeting read "And Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You".

The introduction of lithographic printing and other improved printing techniques meant that by the 1850s, beautifully illustrated multi-coloured cards were winging their way around the country by the sackful.

Interestingly, but perhaps not surprisingly, styles of Christmas cards mirror fashions and artistic tastes of their respective periods.

In addition to the usual Christmas-related images such as jovial Santas, angelic religious scenes, equally angelic and well-dressed children and their pets, and of course snowy chocolate box landscapes, the choice of other subject material seems today to be a little more bizarre.

From my own collection are cards illustrated with ladies riding bicycles, summer flowers in full bloom, swallows perched on a branch of cherry blossom, and arguably the most bizarre — a pig on a child’s swing with an audience of ducks and small birds.

However, whatever their subject, their design echoes the era of their manufacture. It is simple to tell the high Victorian cards from their more modern and florid counterparts produced in the Art Nouveau and Art Deco periods.

They were, in their own small way, advertisements for the expertise of their printers. Many rose to prominence including Mansell, Goodall, Marcus Ward and Raphael Tuck in England and Bernard Ollendorf, Ernest Nister, Lothar Meggendorfer and the Obpacher Brothers Germany.

The first American Christmas card was produced in the early 1850s as an advertisement for "Pease’s Great Varety (sic) Store in the Temple of Fancy". It showed Santa Claus and a happy crowd of people all showing their delight at the presents he had brought them, whilst in the background is a Negro servant setting the Christmas dinner table.

The artists employed to draw illustrations for Christmas cards is a subject for study all to itself. They ranged from the children’s illustrator Kate Greenaway to the powerful monochrome images of Aubrey Beardsley.

And then there were the flippant cards: cards that when turned sideways or upside down show a concealed meaning in the drawing; cards that when opened looked like a banknote or cheque or caused them to squeak.

Perhaps one set of cards hardest to understand today were produced in the 1880s in a series by Raphael Tuck named "Silent Songster". They showed dead robins.

At the time, the series was very popular and was imitated by several other firms in subsequent years. Even the accompanying inscriptions are strange. They read "Sweet messenger of calm decay and Peace Divine" or "But peaceful was the night wherein the Prince of Light His reign of peace upon the earth began".

One can only surmise at their purpose. Perhaps it was a mixture of shame for the slaying of a robin or wren over Christmas and a compassion for birds during the cold winter months.

In contrast, one of my favourite inscriptions is on an Edwradian card decorated with a picture of a rotund and hirsute angel-winged stockbroker. It reads: "I hope you will not think it strange/If I fly from the Stock Exchange/To bring you the news surprising/That all the New Year Bonds are rising!".

Anyway, like I said, I’m not sending any Christmas cards this year, so let me take this opportunity to wish all my reader a happy and restful festive season and a prosperous New Year.

But stop and take another look. Those baubles, knickknacks and trinkets that you remember when you were a child might actually be highly desirable collectors’ items.

And that means hard cash to pay the credit card bill which arrives when Christmas is but a distant memory.

The thought occurred watching Coronation Street the other night. Ken Barlow probably didn’t realise what the Bakelite crib ornament was worth as he hung it on his tree, but it was not lost on me.

Fact is, almost any Christmas tree decorations dating from the 1930s, 40s and even Sixties has a value as a collectable, while some rarities could fund the entire festive season.

Particularly sought after are the hand-blown glass ornaments that I remember used to come in brown cardboard boxes divided into compartments and each wrapped in tissue paper.

That was probably how so many survived the journey from Czechoslovakia, where they were made.

Favourites are the clip-on birds with their fragile spun glass tails and the gaudy baubles, hand-painted with glitter to make them look like they are covered in frost.

To a collector, each has a value of £10 to £15. Rarer examples, particularly those with an unusual shapes or modelled with the heads of cherubs, clowns or animals can easily be double that.

The same can be said for early plastic and even decorations made from cardboard, providing of course they’re in perfect condition.

I remember the Christmas tree from my childhood was hung with little Japanese paper lanterns, each one with a tiny metal candleholder (I was never allowed to put candles in them for fear of burning the house down) that today would be worth £15 to £20 apiece.

I was told they came home in the rucksack of a relative who saw action in that part of the world during the war. Whether that was true, I’ll never know, but I wish I still had them.

Old electric fairylights can also be worth serious money, particularly when they remain in their original cardboard boxes. Own a set today and you’d be best advised to speak to an electrician before putting them to use.

Of course, collectors of such things would ever dream of actually switching the things on!

Picture shows an unusual seasonal survivor – a 1930s artificial Christmas tree complete with its original decorations which was in a sale at Brightwells auctioneers in Leominster. It had been purchased from Binns department store in Sunderland to celebrate the first Christmas of a baby boy and had been kept carefully by the family ever since. It sold for £350.

As the nation recovers from the kind of hangover that happens only once a year, the Royal Society of Chemistry has come up with the answer: apparently the best treatment for the morning after is toast and honey.

I have another answer. Get hold of a copy of a new book, Historical Guide to Delftware and Victorian Ointment Pots, and two things will quickly have you back on your feet: studying the extensive list of ailments that quack Victorian “chemists” claimed they could cure … and the prices some of these pots now command among today’s collectors. It is sobering reading, to say the least.

The book and associated price guide is the work of Liverpool man Bob Houghton and his colleague Mark Priestley, who spent five years researching their subject. The result is a fascinating work which is sure to become the definitive guide to anyone with an interest in collecting.

It is the latter section which I found particularly fascinating. This relates to the Victorian and Edwardian era and is primarily focused on ceramic medical pots that were specifically sold to cure a range of common ailments – some mentionable, others less so!

Historical Guide to Delftware and Victorian Ointment Pots costs £20.00 (plus £5.00 P&P). It can be ordered on the Internet here; by email at ointment.pots@virgin.net or by contacting Bob Houghton directly on 07969 785350.

Medical science was still at a comparatively early stage in its development and many people still held strong beliefs in old cures, handed down through generations, which would provide instant and miraculous remedies for their illnesses.

Some of the makers and manufacturers tried to offer what they believed to be a genuine cure. Others sadly exploited the naivety and ignorance of much of the population and offered instant cure-all remedies with no substance other than alcohol or narcotics.

Ointment pots that broadly date to the Victorian and Edwardian period are very collectable because of their seemingly wild claims, their relatively small size and the significant variety that are now known. The pots also hold fascination for the general public and provide a view of a simplistic past era that existed just 100 years ago.

The Victorian era saw the rapid development of an urban industrial economy with high concentrations of population in major cities and a subsequent rise in the transmission of diseases. The time was right however for many to exploit the ignorance of many workers of the age.

The proliferation of cheaper mass production methods as well as increasingly sophisticated advertising helped to support the growth of many new industries to serve and target this lucrative market.

Thomas Holloway was amongst the first to recognise the power and potential of advertising and spent large sums on worldwide adverts for his ointment and pills. In 1851, UK patent medicine firms had a combined turnover of some £250,000 that grew spectacularly throughout the remainder of the century.

I met Bob Houghton in 2000 when I wrote about his schoolboy hobby of collecting ginger beer bottles which he dug from Victorian rubbish tips. At the time, he told me he had about 140 different examples but he also collected many relatable collectables such as toothpaste and cold cream pot lids which were used and retailed by Liverpool chemists.

He now lives in Marlow, Buckinghamshire, where he is group marketing manager for one of Europe’s biggest packaging companies. He met Mark Priestly, who is head of tax for the same company, 14 years ago and has one of the largest collections of Victorian ointment pots in the country,

The book project was born out of a meeting with another great collector, Dr Anne Young, who has a great collection of Delftware pots which presented the opportunity to also include these fabulous early pots.,

By going through library archives, old Kelly’s and Post Office directories, and with help from the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, the Welcome Institute and the Science Museum, it was possible to date the pots and when their makers were active. No-one has ever done this before.

In 1884, according to the Chemist and Druggist magazine, there were between 800 and 1,000 makers of patent remedies in Great Britain producing up to 5,000 different medicines with some 19,000 people who were employed by the industry in manufacture and distribution.

Many ointments were based on old remedies or at least attempted to engender the feeling that a successful recipe had been passed down through the generations. Brand names such as Mother Ashton, Mrs Croft, Mrs Hulse and Mrs Gares were used to personalise and reinforce the belief that each generation had a secret herbal recipe that could cure all ills.

Without any restrictions on the medical properties of ointments and cures, and together with the ease of manufacture of transfer printed pots on which the claims could be stated, the growth of the quack cure exploded. This is reflected in the vast range of people’s occupations that sold ointment or salves and the fact that the sale of ointment was not limited to chemists or druggists.

Bicycle manufacturers, drapers, newsagents and even a school master are now known to have sold ointment over this relatively short period.

The trade directories are full of similar examples from ‘unknown’ proprietors such as William Spencer, who ran the Butchers’ Arms in Lydiard Millicent, Swindon, in 1889 and also advertised “‘Spencer’s’ ointment for burns, scalds & every description of sores & skin disease”. Another, Mrs Sarah Ann Andrew, is listed in 1879 as a salve and ointment maker but also a coal dealer at 64 Broad Lane, Sheffield.

A growing number of potteries helped to support this potentially lucrative industry and ensured that high quality mass produced containers were available to all. Potteries were located throughout the UK and many produced ointment pots.

The demolition of the Maling Pottery buildings at Newcastle-Upon-Tyne uncovered examples of many of the items produced by this significant supplier, including, not surprisingly, ointment pots for the local business of George Handyside.

Similarly, when Buchan’s Portobello Pottery buildings in Edinburgh were demolished in the early 1970s, hundreds of Singleton’s Golden Eye Ointment pots were discovered.

Port Dundas, based in Glasgow, was another leading Scottish pottery that advertised it produced ointment pots as well as virtually every type of stoneware container imaginable.

Although there was initially no legislation to control the claims made by manufacturers about the powers of their medicines, all medicines in the UK were subject to tax. A government duty of 1½d was levied on all ointments retailing at 1/- (five pence) hence the vast majority of them sold for 1/1½d.

As medicine advanced, so the medical profession began to understand how damaging many of the false claims were affecting the profession as a whole. Most ointments contained little in the way of healing ingredients and many could also have done more harm than good.

The main constituent for most ointments was animal fat such as hogs lard or beef fat as well as bees wax and petroleum jelly which was used as a carrier for herbs or a range of active chemical based ingredients.

The analysis of one of the most popular ointments of the Victorian era, Dr. Roberts’ original Poor Man’s Friend ointment, showed that it consisted chiefly of Paraffin Molle, while Brown’s Herbal Ointment was essentially just petroleum jelly.

Significant advances were made in medicine towards the end of the 19th Century. These were both scientific and also, importantly, in the regulation of medicine, principally by the British Medical Association (BMA) which began to take a leading role in influencing legislation on public health matters.

The exposure of quack medicine with the BMA campaign in 1909 resulted in many proprietors moderating the often exaggerated claims once attributed to their cures while increased scrutiny ultimately caused the demise of many patent medicines and several proprietors were actually prosecuted for fraudulent statements.

The First World War was a watershed for many manufactured products, and pottery containers were quickly replaced by cheaper forms of packaging, such as tins. A few companies continued to use traditional style ointment pots into the 1920s but further efficiency improvements in glass, labels and collapsible metal tubes ended their use by the 1930s.

Incredibly, it was not until the 1941 Pharmacy and Medicines Act that manufacturers were required to disclose the active ingredients on a products’ label.

Pictures show, top: The Reekie ointment pot dates to the late Victorian period. The Reekie family were one of many during this period to sell ointment based on family recipes, which were handed down through the generations. This pot is very rare and commands a value of £350.

Below, left to right: Queen’s Dentifrice. This early tin-glaze Delftware pot dates to circa 1770 and was possibly used by Jacob Hemet, Dentist to Queen Anne and George II. The pot is very rare and valued at £1,500

The Lees Paisley ointment pot is one of the most desirable Victorian ointment pots due to its sepia, pictorial transfer. The value of this small pot which claims to cure a plethora of illnesses is valued at £500+.

The cover of Bob Haughton and Mark Priestley’s book

This attractive blue print transferred pot was sold by William Jones & Co., who had a number of shops in Liverpool and Bootle. The pot dates to circa 1870-80 and is very desirable. It’s worth £250

The Johnson pot is very appealing due to the vast range of medical conditions it claims to cure. There are two sizes known – the smaller pot selling for 1s/3d and larger for 2s/9d. Value £350+

Just back from our annual holiday lugging home with us the usual bag of shells which we collected from the beach. The same has been happening since the beginning of time and it wasn’t long, in some countries, where seashells – so-called Money Cowries – were themselves used as currency in places as far apart as Africa and North America, where East Coast Indians called them Wampum.

Since prehistoric times, some civilisations regarded seashells as important religious symbols, and for others they became musical instruments to call worshippers to prayer or soldiers to prepare for attack. In the case of a victory, a shell horn would be sounded to mark the triumph.

Seashells have also played an important part in fine art. In the Middle Ages, Christ’s Apostle James, the fisherman, was given a scallop shell as an attribute by early Christians, promoting a flood of sculpture, paintings, and illuminated manuscripts across Europe featuring the same symbol.

Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus” showing the goddess of love standing on a scallop shell is one of the most celebrated. Now in the Ufizi Gallery, Florence, the work was painted in about 1480.

The shell found new admirers among Renaissance scientists and architects for the perfection of its structure, the latter often using shell shapes and designs in their buildings.

Leonardo da Vinci studied and made drawings of the perfect spiral construction of some shells which are said to have been the inspiration for the famous spiral staircase of the Chateau de Blois in France.

Throughout the Baroque period, gold and silversmiths incorporated shells in lavish table centrepieces, either using the natural shell itself or cast in precious metal and encrusted with jewels.

The era was one of adventure and exploration and many previously unseen exotic shells were brought back from the New World. They were immediately featured in three-dimensional works of art and most importantly, in paintings by Old Masters, particularly the Dutch, whose inveterate traders brought them home from their voyages.

The fashion for shells reached its zenith towards the end of the 18th century.

The courts of European royalty, notably the Louis X1V and Louis XV, saw a frivolous extravagance of fantastic paintings, sculpture, furniture and landscaping all decorated with a rock and shell design which the French called “rocaille”.

The term produced the word Rococo which was adopted as the name of the period.

It was as if good taste had been forgotten. Even the simplest domestic objects — ceramics, tableware and boxes — were positively encrusted with the wildest type of shells, either actual or invented, while the dignity and religious meaning of the motif was forgotten.

Instead, the shell was reduced to a simple yet charming and fanciful design element which the Georgians embraced to the full in England.

From the father of English ceramics, Josiah Wedgwood (1730-1795) onwards, every potter of note used the shell design in his repertoire and the same can be said of furniture designers such as Robert Adam (1728-1792) and silversmiths such as the Huguenot Nicholas Sprimont (1716-1771).

Nowhere is the trend better seen than in the construction of the Royal Pavilion built at Brighton by Regency architect John Nash (1752-1853) for the Prince Regent.

The Victorians were at least as frivolous but more sentimental. Seashells were widely appreciated with the growth of interest in natural history of the world but more importantly, the spread of the of the railways, the ease of travel and the idea of day-tripping and holidays at the seaside meant it was only natural for people to collect souvenirs from the beach.

Soon, small cottage industries sprang up producing all manner of boxes, ornaments and knickknacks decorated with shells stuck to them.

Alternatively, specialist shops sold plain boxes and such knickknacks as vases, picture frames, pocket watch holders and so on together with small bags of miscellaneous shells so that customers could decorate them at home. This was pre-TV remember.

As the craze grew, exotic shells were imported from abroad and sold either plain, polished or with engraved decoration, while cameo brooches — shells carved with scenes and portrait busts and set into mounts with pins and safety chains — also became popular.

The newly enriched middle classes filled their homes to the point of clutter with such fripperies, while the serious Victorian naturalist owned a collectors’ cabinet, usually in rich mahogany, into which his shells were carefully stored, labelled with their Latin names and studied in depth.

A particularly attractive Victorian shell creation is the so-called sailor’s Valentine which by tradition was a touching souvenir brought home to loved ones by Jack tars from their voyages in the South Seas.

Usually comprising a wooden box, often hexagonal in shape, and hinged so that it opened in two halves, the Valentines were decorated with intricate patterns of tropical shells usually containing a shell-shaped heart or some endearing message such as “Remember Me” or “Love the Giver”.

Folk lore aside, it is more likely that most of the Valentines were made by backstreet workers in the Pacific Islands and sold to visitors, whether they were sailors or tourists.

Particularly grand were the “floral arrangements” made entirely from shells and kept dust free under magnificent but scarily fragile glass domes.

Equally sought after today are 19th century framed pictures, again made entirely from shells, which must have taken many hours to produce.

A simple Victorian shell-covered box can be had for a few pounds. In perfect condition, shell Valentines are worth at least £400-600, often more, while shell arrangements under glass domes start at £100 and rise to £300-400 depending on size.

Pictures show, Top, A 19th century sailor’s Valentine worth £400-600.

Below, left to right, This mid-19th century shell box has a lid centred by a heart-shaped silk plush heart, while the sides are of paper printed with shell designs. It’s worth £60-80

A late Victorian shell anchor meant to be hung on the wall of some seafarer’s cottage. It’s worth £40-60

Queen Victoria started the trend for holidays in Scotland, giving birth to a huge industry producing souvenirs decorated with tartan. This mid-19th century shell-covered box is worth £100-150

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by Christopher Proudlove©

Collecting is such a wonderful excuse. You can fill your home with all sorts of junk and never have to worry what friends and neighbours think. Why people collect is a complete mystery to me … I just do it, to the exclusion of almost any other pastime.

The things people collect is also particularly amusing. Most bizarre I’ve ever come across was a collector of barbed wire! He was an American (of course) whose passion was the display in his ‘den’ of 18inch strands of the stuff fastened to highly polished mahogany plinths. Personally, I was amazed to learn there were so many different types.

A collection of antique milk bottles was another strange one, while other acquaintances of ours hoard respectively Victorian tiles; printed billheads; wrappers from paper packets of dressmaker’s pins; cut-throat razors; clothes brushes with advertising slogans printed on them and ventriloquists; dummies.

I have a slightly different ambition. I want to collect, not a group of things all broadly similar, but rather an assemblage of objects whose design or intended purpose is so outrageous or unusual that they must be saved for posterity. And the curiouser the better!

I’m well on the way, already. The shelves chez nous already groan under the weight of such obtuse pieces as a hammer, a fire extinguisher, a wasp trap, a darning mushroom, a walking stick, a rolling pin and a model of a sailing ship.

What makes them unusual is that each is made from glass.

The hammer is just a jokey thing like red lamp oil and tartan paint, made by a glass blower with a sense of humour.

The fire extinguisher is more serious. On discovering a blaze, the idea was to throw the thing, which is filled with a fire retarding chemical, at the seat of the flames so that it smashes and spills out the contents to do its work.

They were effective and, therefore, quite rare nowadays. Take a trip to Erdigg Hall, the National Trust home near Wrexham.

One of the most complete late 18th century country homes in the country, the house has pairs of the so-called Harden Star Hand Grenade, hanging one each side of the doors to each room.

They cost 45 shillings (£2.25) per dozen when they were new in 1885. Today a single example – they come in either cobalt blue or green – would change hands for around £60-80.

The nice thing about the wasp trap is that no one has a clue what it’s for until they’re told. It’s also ingeniously designed and a wonderful shape.

Interestingly, garden centres have hit on the idea and are now selling cheap and nasty copies. Pay around £3-5 for one of those or £40-60 for a wonderful hand-blown Victorian example.

The other three pieces are simply unlikely examples of glass manufacturing. They emanate probably from the Nailsea or perhaps Stourbridge glassworks of the mid19th century.

Each is part of a group of glassware collectively known as friggers. Tradition has it they were made from scrap glass at the end of the day’s production that would otherwise have been wasted.

Instead, the glassblowers spent a little of their own time before going home to produce knickknacks to sell for some extra pocket money.

More likely, small glassworks were set up to produce the objects as decorative souvenirs in a cottage industry just like Staffordshire potters made flatback figures.

That’s probably enough glass. Now’s the time to branch out into other areas. I’m still looking for a left-handed moustache cup; a patent nose improver (a miniature leather harness contraption invented by a man called C. Lees Ray in 1908); a damp bed detector (an early 20th century pocket hygrometer, essential for the traveller in a strange hotel) and, just to double check whether or not I’ve finally lost my marbles, a phrenology head like the one illustrated here.

“You want your bumps feeling,” she said when I told the Business Manager of my plan to buy the other day.

Precisely, said I. And thanks to Dr Franz Josef Gall, a diagnosis shouldn’t be a problem.

It was he who, in 1796, devised a system for assessing a person’s capabilities by studying the shape of their skull. He called the study Phrenology.

It was based on two assumptions, one since scientifically confirmed: that particular human faculties are to some extent localised in particular areas of the brain; the other, subsequently debunked: that the size of these areas can be felt via the bumps on your head.

However, at the time the latter was a popular theory that was taken deadly seriously. Even up to the beginning of this century, it was believed there was a connection.

As a result, thousands of white glazed earthenware pottery heads – the scalp printed with a kind of road map to the 30odd zones where Dr Gall decided one’s faculties were located – were a common sight in doctors’ and psychiatrists’ surgeries.

The most common stand just under a foot tall and date from the latter part of the 19th century when an American called L.N. Fowler – his name was printed on the front – took up the cause.

Presumably the psychiatrist would have had the thing on his desk to refer to as he ran his fingers over the patient’s head.

Other more rare examples were manufactured in porcelain for the tops of sealing wax seals, while slightly larger versions doubled as inkwells.

Such heads were snapped up eagerly some years ago and prices for the larger desk top versions were around the £1,000 mark.

However, their saleroom success prompted a flood of fakes onto the market, some of which were (and still are) notoriously difficult to spot.

As a result, prices slipped and remain somewhat depressed by comparison with, say, five years ago. Expect to pay currently around the £350-450 mark for a right ‘un.

If I did, I suspect there’d be an extra bump on my head … where the glass hammer she was wielding had caught me a glancing blow!

American brothers Lorenzo Niles Fowler (1811-1896) and Orson Squire Fowler (1809-1887) travelled extensively lecturing for free and examining heads for a fee. Their sister, Charlotte, and Lorenzo Fowler’s wife, Lydia, became notable phrenologists, and they subsequently opened an office in New York, establishing the Phrenological Cabinet, displaying casts, skulls, charts, and other curiosities of the movement.Branches of the Cabinet were opened in Boston and Philadelphia.
In 1843, Charlotte Fowler married a medical student, Samuel Roberts Wells, who then entered into partnership with his brothers-in-law, forming the publishing house of Fowler and Wells. The firm produced thousands of copies of phrenological texts and they sold, cranial casts, and the famous L.N. Fowler heads
Phrenology heads were made in America and some were no doubt imported to the UK. However, the majority of those found today were probably made by Charles Collinson & Son, a sanitaryware maker in the Potteries town of Burslem. They date from the third quarter of the 19th century.
However, for every right example that turns up in auction sale, antique shop or fair, there are literally hundreds of fakes doing the rounds. The easy way to spot such duffs is to put one side by side with an original – the differences are obvious. Look for unlikely glaze cracking patterns and be wary if the lines of cracking appear to be too black. Faked cracking is easy to spot. Check the weight – fakes are much lighter. Is the gold convincing? Again, modern ‘gold’ decoration is nowhere near as good as the original. Is the thing too perfect? Age means wear and damage, fakes are usually in good condition. Ask for a guarantee. No guarantee, no sale.

Pictures show: top, Ink heads: These phrenology heads are also inkwells. They date from the 1860s and were probably made in Staffordshire. Note the central dipping hole and the holes left and right to hold pens when not in use

Below: left to right, Scientific journals made many wild claims about the significance of phrenology and the study of the shapes of heads, as this contemporary print proves – no matter who might have been upset by the “findings”

A Charles Collinson L.N. Fowler phrenology head worth £350-450

The craze for phrenology spread to the advertising world, as these trade cards for hatter Pryor proves. The cards is worth a few pounds