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ENGLAND The Country of Ceramics and Tea Rituals
Welcome to the English room of our virtual cabinet. For over two hundred years, "Made in England" on a cup, dish or figurine has meant one thing to collectors: honest craftsmanship with a story attached.The heart of English ceramics beats in Staffordshire the famous Potteries around Stoke-on-Trent. Josiah Wedgwood founded his company in 1759 and went on to create Jasperware (1774) and Queen's Ware, decorating the tables of royalty across Europe. His contemporaries and successors Royal Doulton, Royal Worcester, Crown Derby and dozens of smaller Staffordshire potteries produced the fine china, nursery figures and ornamental wares that fill collections today.Beyond ceramics, England gave collectors Georgian and Victorian silver from Sheffield and Birmingham, elegant glassware, and the small marvels of everyday Victorian life: scent bottles, sewing boxes, trinket dishes and tea caddies. The ritual of afternoon tea turned the modest cup and saucer into an object of art for an entire nation.
Whatever corner of English domestic life you love Royal Doulton character jugs, Wedgwood jasper, or a quiet Copper Lustre jug there is always one more piece waiting to be found.

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FRANCE Elegance in Porcelain, Crystal and Everyday ArtistryBienvenue to the French room of our cabinet. France refined an artist's touch for everything it touched from royal porcelain to the humble coffee pot.French porcelain begins with the royal furnace: a workshop moved from Vincennes to Sèvres in 1756 and taken under the wing of the crown in 1759. Under the direction of artists like Jean-Claude Duplessis, Sèvres produced the celebrated soft-paste vases and services that still set auction records. Nearby, the discovery of kaolin clay helped French factories perfect hard-paste porcelain, and the region of Limoges became the continent's porcelain and enamel capital.The French table was also set by Baccarat crystal (founded 1764), by the gentle hand-painted faience of Quimper in Brittany, and by the majolica-style wares of Sarreguemines, whose factory began work in 1790.Modern France added its own classics for collectors: the colourful ceramic figures of Vallauris, santons the little Provençal Santons Christmas figures and bold studio ceramics by the Masters of the Côte d’Azur. Every piece carries the easy confidence of French taste.Click the picture to step into our stores.

GERMANY Precision, Porcelain and the First Workshop of EuropeWillkommen to the German room of our cabinet. If England gave the world ceramic charm, Germany gave it precision and the very first hard-paste porcelain in Europe.In 1710 Augustus the Strong opened the Meissen manufactory near Dresden. With the alchemist Johann Friedrich Böttger and the sculptor Johann Joachim Kaendler (who arrived in 1731), Meissen became the model for every porcelain court of Europe. Its crossed-swords mark is still the most collected porcelain signature in the world and its figurines, from harlequins to the onion-pattern dinner service, remain the gold standard.German porcelain continued through KPM Berlin, Rosenthal of Selb and the Hutschenreuther family firms, each producing the richly decorated tablewares and figures that fill glass cases from Hamburg to Munich.Beyond the kiln, Germany is the country of fine blades from Solingen, of carved wooden toys and nutcrackers from the Erzgebirge, and of sturdy silver and pewter from old guild towns. Collecting German goods means collecting the very idea of careful, handed-down craftsmanship.Click the picture to step into our stores.

MEXICO Talavera and the Silver of TaxcoBienvenidos to the Mexican room of our cabinet. Mexico blends European techniques with a completely original Latin soul the result is among the most colourful collecting fields there is.The signature ceramic is Talavera Poblana, the tin-glazed earthenware of Puebla. Fired in the 1600s following the faience traditions brought from Spain (and before that from the Middle East), its blue-and-white decoration later joined by green, yellow and manganese was so prized that the potters organised a guild before 1653 to protect it. Old Talavera tiles and dishes are sought after across the world.Just as famous is Mexican silver. In 1931 the American-born silversmith William Spratling opened a workshop in Taxco and trained a generation of local masters, giving birth to the modern Mexican silver revival. Taxco silver jewellery with its bold Aztec-inspired motifs is a collectible in its own right.Mexico also gives collectors bright folk art: the papier-mâché alebrijes, joyous pottery figures from Oaxaca, and the painted tin ornaments of traditional Christmas. Every piece feels handmade, handmade on purpose.Click the picture to step into our stores.

ITALY Glass from Murano, Ceramics from the Old TownsBenvenuti to the Italian room of our cabinet. Italy never needed a national style every region is a small country with its own fiery tradition.The greatest of them is Murano. In 1291 the glassmakers of Venice were ordered to move their furnaces to the island of Murano, and there they invented modern glass art. Angelo Barovier developed the celebrated transparent cristallo in the 1400s. Centuries later the same island produced the millefiori, filigrana and multicoloured vessels of Fratelli Toso (in business since 1854) and the vivid revival of Salviati in 1859. Every modern glassmaker Venini, Seguso and their successors still stands on the shoulders of Murano.No less rich is Italian ceramics. The word "faience" itself comes from the city of Faenza, whose glazed earthenware travelled across Europe. The maiolica of Deruta, the painted plates of Caltagirone in Sicily, and the delicate porcelain of Capodimonte in Naples each town made its own unmistakable decoration. The little majolica birds, dishes and pharmacy jars of old Italian towns are among the sweetest collectibles an antique lover can find.Italy proves that the best collecting is simply a pleasant walk through a sunlit town square.Click the picture to step into our stores.

SCANDINAVIA Light, Glass and the Nordic TableWelcome to the Scandinavian room of our cabinet. In the long northern winters, the people of Scandinavia turned to light itself and made glass one of their great national arts.Sweden leads the way. Glassworks bloomed in the forests of Småland from the 1700s: Kosta, founded in 1742, is today the oldest working glassworks in Sweden. In 1898 came Orrefors, whose engraved art glass and disciplined forms made "Swedish glass" a global style keyword. Along the way, names like Gustavsberg and the glass artists who worked with them shaped the charming utilitarian wares every collector loves.Next door, Denmark produced Royal Copenhagen, founded in 1775. Its blue fluted china and the botanical Flora Danica service are among the most beloved tableware patterns in Europe. Norway contributed its own Porsgrund porcelain and long tradition of drinking horns and silver, while Finland developed the modernist glass and ceramics of Arabia and friends.But the Nordic home means more than glass: sterling silver by Scandinavian silversmiths, warm birch-wood treen items, and the cheerful mid-century enamel are all treasures of the North.Click the picture to step into our stores.

RUSSIA Blue Gzhel, Golden Khokhloma and Imperial SurprisesWelcome to the Russian room of our cabinet. Here imperial luxury meets the warm colours of village crafts a contrast that makes Russian collecting so rewarding.The most famous Russian ceramic is Gzhel: snow-white pottery covered with bright blue hand painting, made in the village district of Gzhel near Moscow since the early 1800s. Its blue-on-white style flowers, birds and whole scenes is recognised the world over. Alongside it stands Khokhloma, the golden and black painted wooden ware of the Volga region, and the filigree metalwork of the Russian north.Russia also invented some of the world's most loved collectibles. The matryoshka nesting doll, first turned in the 1890s, is a symbol of the country itself. The samovar the grand tea urn was perfected in Tula from the 1770s, where it was made for more than two centuries in hundreds of patterns. And at the very top of the collector's tree sits Faberge, whose workshops in St. Petersburg produced the imperial Easter eggs and jewelled novelties that defined the last golden age of the Russian court.From a cheerful Gzhel sugar bowl to an imperial egg, Russia offers collecting at every scale.Click the picture to step into our stores

CHINA The Porcelain Capital of a Thousand YearsWelcome to the Chinese room of our cabinet. China invented porcelain and then spent a thousand years perfecting it into the admired king of every cabinet.The city of Jingdezhen, on the Chang river, was the porcelain capital of the world. For centuries its kilns supplied the imperial court with the finest wares: the signature blue-and-white porcelain of the Ming (1368-1644) and Qing (1644-1912) dynasties, painted with cobalt under a glassy glaze. Later masters added the brilliant enamel palettes the famille verte and famille rose whose flowers, phoenixes and scholars' scenes shine from museum cases from Beijing to Boston.Beyond porcelain, China offers the collector cloisonne: bronze vessels and vases covered with jewel-like enamel in metal cells, a craft that reached its glory in the Ming and Qing courts. Snuff bottles in glass, jade and porcelain, carved lacquer boxes and scholar's desk items complete the picture of a sophisticated collecting tradition.To hold an old Chinese bowl is to hold a piece of technical mastery no other culture ever matched.Click the picture to step into our stores.

AFRICA The Rhythm of the Mother ContinentWelcome to the African room of our cabinet. Africa speaks in bold shapes and honest materials wood, bronze, clay and woven fibre and its objects carry centuries of meaning.African collecting embraces the carved wooden masks and figures made for ceremonial life: their clean geometry influenced some of the greatest European artists of the last century. The bronze plaques and figures of old Benin, the ancestral figural carvings of Central Africa, and the ceremonial heddle pulleys and staff finials of West Africa are all prized today as both art and history.Around them sits the Africa of everyday hands: richly woven kente and adire cloths, leatherwork of the Sahara crossings, hand-built pottery with burnished surfaces and incised patterns, and the bright beadwork of the south. Each piece was made by hand, for a purpose, with a sense of proportion that needs no museum label.Collecting African artefacts is a way of inviting into your home the oldest continuing craft traditions on Earth.Click the picture to step into our African corner in our stores.

UKRAINE Folk Colours of the Steppe CountryWelcome to the Ukrainian room of our cabinet. Ukraine is a treasury of folk art, most literally by hand.The pride of Ukrainian decoration is Petrykivka, the ornate floral painting that takes its name from the village of Petrykivka in the Dnipropetrovsk region. Its free-flowing branches, berries and birds, painted with fine brushes onto paper, wood and jugs, were inscribed on UNESCO's list in 2013 proof that the old village tradition is very much alive.Ukraine is equally famous for its pottery. The ceramics of Opishnia, in the Poltava region, go back to the 19th century: rich brown and cream earthenware with incised and painted ornament, made by generations of potters' dynasties. In the Carpathian west, the painted ceramics of Kosiv, with their deep greens and yellows and carved sgraffito designs, earned a place on the UNESCO list in 2019. Each region adds its own loud, happy voice to the family of folk craft.No picture of Ukrainian craft is complete without the embroidered shirt the vyshyvanka whose symbolic patterns protect and celebrate the wearer.Click the picture to step into our stores.

JAPAN Wares of the Empire of the Rising SunYōkoso" (ようこそ) - Welcome to the Japanese room of our cabinet. Few countries made collecting so effortless every cup, plate or ornament carries a quiet artistic intelligence unique in the world.Japanese porcelain was born in Arita, in the far north of Kyushu, after kaolin was found there at the start of the 1600s. Trade soon turned local kilns into international stars: the blue-and-white and overglaze-enamelled wares we call Imari crossed the oceans on Dutch and Chinese ships from the mid-1600s onward. The Kakiemon family perfected the delicate red-and-blue enamel palette, while Nabeshima wares served the feudal lords themselves. In the 19th century the highly decorated Satsuma vases and figures became the favorite souvenirs of the West, and by 1904 Noritake had begun the export tableware that graced homes in the West for a hundred years.Japan also gave collectors the intimate world of netsuke, the carved toggles for silk purses, and shippo the brilliant cloisonne enamels whose wire-and-glass surfaces glow like stained glass.From a single Arita bowl to a full tea set, Japanese wares reward collectors with centuries of refined taste in one small hand.Click the picture to step into our stores

RESTORATION The American Collector's RoomWelcome to the Restoration room our celebration of American collecting. This is the room where the 20th century, seen through shelves and cupboards, turns into a warm history of ordinary life.The American story in glass is famous: the bright machine-pressed wares of the Depression era, glowing carnival glass, and the cheerful china of Homer Laughlin's Fiesta line, introduced in 1936 and loved ever since. American kitchen archaeology â mixing bowls, canisters and refrigerator sets has become a serious collecting field of its own.The room shines in printed paper too: vintage advertising signs, old postcards and catalogs that carry the roadside history of routes and small towns, the glass soda bottles of long-closed bottling works, and the tin toys that once filled dime stores.Finally, there is the quiet world of tools and hardware hand tools, cast-iron kitchen helpers and workshop implements, made in America with honest heavy iron. Restoration means bringing all of that history back to useful life, one object at a time.Everything vintage, everything American, everything waiting for a second chance.Click on the image to visit our shops featuring items before and after restoration.

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