The British firm of F & C Osler were the leading makers of chandeliers and lighting during the nineteenth century. They also made some of the most spectacular glass furniture the world has seen.
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Sending a postcard is something most of us have done while on holiday, even if it was only to sign the back with a laid-back flourish. But in the early 20th century the postcard was also a work of art.
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Fine dining at a table set with luxurious decor was an important part of Victorian life, especially for the new wealthy middle class.
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If asked to think of a countertop kitchen appliance, its likely that the toaster would be up there in most people’s top two, alongside the kettle. There are few kitchens without them, for since the mid-twentieth century, toasters have been an essential part of the daily breakfast routine. But how did they come to be such an integral part of domestic life?
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When you think of fairies, are you picturing Cicely Barker’s charming flower fairies, those beautiful little people with butterfly wings? Or perhaps you’re imagining Tinkerbell, J.M.Barrie’s feisty winged heroine.
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Essex crystal was a Victorian trend that today can seem a little bit kitsch, but in its time was hugely popular.
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From their initial use as a decorative but functional food dispenser to their transformation into the ultimate dining room frippery, the epergne has always had a place on the well-laid table.
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The pincushion was created as a means to keep precious pricey sewing pins safe, with pin pillows and other little cushions
emerging in 15th century England. The pastime of embroidery was for the rich, so the pincushion became a status symbol, often worn from the waist like a chatelaine and even mentioned in wills and lists of assets.
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Glass souvenirs were a common novelty throughout Britain, Europe and America, especially as local and international travel was a popular past-time and well afforded by the new wealthy middle class.
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Shellwork was a popular pastime with aristocratic ladies of the 18th century, spurred on by the research of Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778), who developed the modern binomial naming system for plants and animals and whose fascination with discoveries of the natural world led to the so-called Age of Enlightenment.
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As polite society evolved, mourning customs became a way for an individual to participate in society while going through a loss. Billy Robertson and Elizabeth Cheung look at love and mourning in the Victorian period.
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The second half of the 19th century saw the rise in popularity of coloured mould-pressed and hand-blown glass, fashioned into purely decorative or novelty items such as Easter eggs, witch balls, sun catchers, sock darners and colourful friggers and whimsies.
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For over 150 years, the Punch and Judy puppet show has been an essential part of the British seaside holiday.
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Specialist glass collector John Frith highlights scent bottles that shine under lights.
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The use of extra hair was so widespread in the Victorian era that Godey’s Lady’s Book from the 1860s instructed, ‘When a lady is in danger of drowning, raise her by the dress and not by the hair, which oftentimes remains in the grasp.’
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Early in 2023, the fashion online store Mocha announced the beaded bag as a strong style statement, and Harper’s Bazaar touted ’10 beaded bags to perfect your summer look’. But it’s not the first time the beaded bag has been a fashion icon.
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Our western society was based on the classical past and this is very obvious when we examine the objects and designs favoured by the later Georgians and Victorians.
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On 26 January 1856, English glassmaker Benjamin Richardson was given a patent for an innovative glass design that incorporated ‘an improvement in the manufacture of articles in glass, so as to produce peculiar ornamental effect’. Specialist collector John Frith investigates.
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“Every specialist has an object that they dream of having in their sales,” says Matthew Rubinger, Christie’s UK head of Handbags and Accessories. “For me, it’s the aluminium Explorer trunk by Louis Vuitton.” Given that Louis Vuitton produced just a handful of these aluminium trunks in 1892, and taking into account that today only two examples are known to exist, it would seem Matthew’s wish was unlikely to come true. Until the day one came through the doors at Christie’s London.
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Burmantofts Pottery gained a reputation out of all proportion to the factory’s relatively short heyday. We reflect on a short but beautiful life.
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The late Victorian era through to the early 20th century saw the production of coloured glass articles of a diversity of styles and purposes, using many different techniques.
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He created everything from simple wooden one-room houses to the most elaborate mansions, with every minute detail to impeccable scale… the name of Moritz Gottschalk is a giant among the miniature world of dollhouses.
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Scottish scientist William Rhind was fascinated by nature – including the practical uses of botany. Walter Hood Fitch’s imaginative presentation of the illustrations greatly enhanced Rhind’s A History of the Vegetable Kingdom, first issued in 1841.
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They started out as ‘penny bloods’: cheap booklets that told gruesome tales of murder and mayhem. At their peak there were up to 100 different publishers of sensational stories guaranteed to titillate the Victorian masses.
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From about 1890 to the 1930s, small hand-blown coloured swirl-striped scent bottles – sometimes called purse scent bottles – were made in Germany.
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Paying to use a public convenience was first introduced in the UK in London in the 1850s, when a coin-operated lock was put on the toilet outside the Royal Exchange. But ‘spending a penny’, as it rather coyly came to be known, required different equipment in the home…
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Visitors to the Great Exhibitions of the 19th century often wrote of being dazzled by the monumental glass structures, fountains, lighting fixtures and sculptures they saw there, but of all the glassware on display it was the French firm of Baccarat that most consistently impressed contemporary observers.
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Dresden is an area as opposed to a single business. There were as many as 200 porcelain decorating studios operating in Dresden between 1850 and 1914, many decorated with applied flowers adorning the dresses, hair and base of the figures. But the real star of the show was the incredibly delicate Dresden lace.
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Today’s era has often been called the ‘throwaway’ society, but the concept of throwaway goes back much farther than that: the ‘throwaway’ cologne scent bottle was popular from the 18th century.
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From a wool-broker’s manager to a lauded silversmith, Gilbert Leigh Marks trod a less common path to glory.
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The first published flower dictionaries appeared in France in 1810, but the fascination for flowers and their delicate display has never abated and from the early 1800s to the early 1900s, glass posy baskets were all the rage.
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What do silversmith Alexander Crichton, Alice in Wonderland and claret jugs have in common? Quite a lot, actually: Crichton is credited with starting a late 19th century trend in claret jugs that was partly inspired by Sir John Tenniel’s illustrations in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (1865) and Alice Through the Looking Glass (1872).
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As Valentine’s Day approaches we’ll be awash with hearts, cupids, roses and declarations of undying adoration, but for those who prefer to be a little less loving, we bring you the comic Valentine.
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They both protect against the weather, they look remarkably similar and until the mid-18th century the words ‘parasol’ and ‘umbrella’ were used interchangeably. Their histories are forever intertwined.
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Recently in Hobart, the scrapbook album of Robin Hood Lloyd (1828-1916) appeared. As AAADA member Warwick Oakman writes, Hood was a lithographer and framer of Elizabeth Street in Hobart.
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Many people aren’t sure what a half doll is, but it was designed without legs so it could be attached to something useful and add charm to a mundane object such as a pincushion.
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You might think the inkwell is a pretty simple object, and in most cases you would be right – but not in the case of the isobath.
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It’s the go-to drink for any celebration. Marilyn Monroe once bathed in 360 bottles of it: despite reports to the contrary, James Bond favoured it over martinis; and Winston Churchill apparently drank 42,000 bottles of it in his lifetime. Cheers, sweetie-dahlings, its champagne
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Swimwear from the mid-19th century looked more like long bloomers with a big, baggy dress worn over the top, made from a sturdy black flannel fabric that was heavy enough that it wouldn’t float with the water; with weights sometimes sewn into the hem. These garments were highlighted in Godey’s Lady’s Book of 1864 as innovative women’s clothing.
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Trimming horses with horse brass dates back to the pre-Roman period, although the horses brasses we know today first appeared in the 1700s.
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It wasn’t so long ago that the only time you saw a scrapbook was in a movie where the serial killer had kept all the newspaper cuttings of his gruesome exploits. It was a pretty unexpected end to a hugely popular art that swept the Victorian era and left us not only with some glorious examples of the scrapbook, but also gave a window into the private world of the maker.
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In the 17th century, the exotic shells brought back by The Dutch East India Company stimulated an infatuation for shells that took hold of European collectors: the very wealthy and royalty competed to collect the prized rare shells with great passion. But it was the Victorians who took shellwork to a new level.
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During the late 1700s, potteries in the Staffordshire region of England created small ceramic figures to commemorate everything from classical artwork and political movements to tabloid headlines.
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Cabinets of curiosities – or Wunderkammer – featured contents that were not considered odd or peculiar, but were to be viewed as items designed to arouse curiosity and wonder, to help study and interpret the world around us and our place in it.
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AAADA member John Hawkins explains the appeal of an unusual collection: jewellery made using baby teeth.
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The fairy lamp conjures up an ethereal scene of a candle-burning night lamp surrounded by swirls of fairies spreading angel dust with their magic wands, but the name actually came from a logo belonging to a certain Samuel Clarke, of a fairy holding a wand.
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The concept of having a special dress for your wedding day is fairly recent. For centuries the bride simply wore her finest dress to the ceremony, even if that dress was black or patterned. Blue was particularly popular because it represented purity. But when Queen Victoria married her prince in 1840, she initiated a tradition that’s still going strong 177 years later.
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From the early 1850s until the early 1930s, Scottish woodworkers produced a type of souvenir specific to their area, called Mauchlineware after the town in Ayrshire in which it was first developed, it was particularly popular with well-to-do Victorians looking for a momento from their holiday.
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The Barlow sisters are probably the best-known female designers to work at the Doulton Lambeth factory, but there were other women who played a vital role in the development of the pottery. Decorating ceramics was considered ‘fit work for women’, the Ladies of Lambeth wielded ‘girl power’, a good century before anyone would ever hear of the spice girls.
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Fashion has always gone to extremes, but the crinoline was possibly the most impractical, cumbersome and indeed life-threatening creation ever. A twenty-year phenomenon, from the 1850s to the 1870s that swept all before it – often literally, if some cartoonists of the time are to be believed.
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“Seamen never made woolworks with the idea that they would be considered valuable works of art,” says New York-based antiques dealer Paul Vandekar, a specialist dealer in woollies: embroidered ship portraits sewn primarily by 19th century mariners between trips to sea.
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Their eyes meet across a crowded room and she brings her delicate lace fan up to her face. He waits for their silent conversation to begin… Is she single? Married? Interested in getting acquainted? All will be revealed with the secret language of the fan…
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What does the current pandemic have in common with the Great Depression? Answer: A massive surge in the popularity of the jigsaw! Ivor Hughes takes a timely look at the history of a soothing pastime.
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Carnival floats, novelty face masks yes, but paper furniture? Ivor Hughes examines the oriental origins and inspiration for a practical and popular Victorian furniture-making process.
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If Christmas cards are designed to send a note of seasonal affection to both your nearest and dearest and more distant acquaintances, then the images here might make you think again.
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Conceived and developed in the beautiful environs of its namesake town in Ireland’s county Fermanagh, the translucent porcelain of the Belleek pottery is hailed as the thinnest and most delicate in the world.
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It used to be that visitors to museums and institutions, and National Trust properties in particular, expected to see spaces and houses decorated or styled with items commensurate with the period. But now you’re just as likely to see an Eames chair sitting alongside a Welsh dresser, writes Dawn Davis.
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First introduced to Europe by sailors in the 15th century, the taking of snuff became a sophisticated pleasure enjoyed by the aristocracy and dedicated followers of fashion, so it’s no surprise that the snuff box itself evolved into an item of refinement.
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Ivor Hughes considers the life and work of William de Morgan, one of the most important ceramic artists of the 19th century.
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Regardless of where we are, and irrespective of whether a customer is a relative novice or an experienced collector, one of the most consistent comments we hear is that there is something ‘special’ about the rich flambé glaze for which Royal Doulton (and some art pottery firms such as Moorcroft) are famous.
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