Unexpected finds of early Chinese porcelain do still occur — when a lamp base, for example, or a dog’s bowl turns out to be a valuable early Ming piece. But there is also plenty of later blue and white to attract the collector.

The origins of underglaze-blue decoration are debatable, but certainly it was in use in China by the second quarter of the 14th century. Cobalt oxide, a black pigment which turns blue on firing, had been imported from Persia in Tang times (AD 618-906) and used to colour glazes. But it was the idea of painting it onto a white porcelain body before glazing and final firing that produced the blue and white style of decoration that is still in wide use today. (more…)

From the time of their invention in the late 17th century, small tables for special purposes have been produced in considerable quantities, many of them extendible and many decorated with beautiful inlay, marquetry and veneer.

Small tables for use when sewing, playing board or card games, reading or writing were popular from the early 18th century. Some have a double top which folds over to increase the table’s size, while others have small drop flaps at the sides. Folding tea and card tables were generally made in a small rectangular or half-moon shape, the top opening out to reveal a polished wood or baize surface. Most were fitted with drawers or a storage well in the middle to hold games pieces, a lady’s sewing equipment or other small possessions. Easily movable tables such as these were found in almost all upper and middle-class Georgian and Victorian living rooms. As with all popular types of furniture made in large quantities, the value of a piece depends on the quality of the table’s design and construction, its rarity, and how original it has remained. (more…)

A knife and fork may seem the perfect combination by modern standards, but before forks came into general use the knife and the spoon were the two vital, complementary utensils which served the needs at table. While eighteenth century examples of knives with handles of cast silver are available at a very high cost, the expense involved in making these in the heavier-gauge silver means that most eighteenth century examples available today are of the thinner silver produced at the end of the century.

Forks were used increasingly in England after the Restoration. The Victoria and Albert Museum, London, has a two-pronged fork made in 1632, one of the oldest silver table forks, but this is a very rare example. (more…)

A few years after the turn of the eighteenth century the spoon eventually developed into the utensil which we use today. By 1720 its stem had become gracefully curved and terminated in a flat, rounded end which turned forward or upward and upon which it was rested on the table, so that the back of the bowl was uppermost in the French way. This Hanoverian rat-tail spoon continued in fashion for a few more years, the rat-tail gradually disappearing to be replaced by small droplets, either one or two, at the back of the bowl, or the increasingly fashionable scallop-shell, typical of the rococo period. The stem evolved into a flatter form, terminating by the 1760s in a curve which turned in the opposite direction to its predecessor, ie backward instead of forward, so that the spoon could be placed on the table with the interior of its bowl showing,as is still the custom in England and elsewhere today. This is termed the `Old English’ pattern and has been the basic form for spoons ever since. (more…)

In the twentieth century it is difficult to imagine eating meals without the aid of cutlery, yet it was not until the eighteenth century that it became the general custom to use forks, knives and spoons. The habit spread only gradually. Towards the later years of the seventeenth century a host might be expected to provide cutlery at table and although this tendency increased, many travellers carried with them their own personal set of a fork, knife and spoon, in a case often made of tooled leather, until as late as around the middle of the eighteenth century. (more…)

After boxes and caskets, let’s look at bottles. Bottles for scent and smelling salts, pomades and creams, for snuff, medicine, wine, beer, spirits, acids—in other words for everything that needs a stopper rather than a lid. Like boxes, they come in every sort of material, from porcelain to silver, from gold to stoneware.

I believe that one of these days collectors will wake up to the fact that the last hundred years has been the making of more collectable bottles than at any other period of history. Glassmakers, metalworkers, potters, and now plastic manufacturers, have been designing and making bottles, not only as lovely works of art and craftsmanship, but as mass production items which nevertheless are examples of excellent and interesting design. The astute collector will therefore look not only at the exquisite things of the past with which we start our brief review of bottles, but also at what has been made in the last century by the factories. Much of this is now beginning to take on that interesting look of the once commonplace thing which no longer does its original job, and which has acquired a new strangeness, even beauty, in our eyes. (more…)