During the 18th century, a continuous stream of porcelain dinner services arrived from China while others were manufactured in Europe. They originally copied shapes that had been made in contemporary European pewter or silver.

Chinese Export Porcelain

At first, Chinese porcelain was unrivalled as it was both fashionable and cheap. Throughout the 18th century, services by the ton packed the holds of the East India companies’ ships. Many were meticulously painted to order with the armorials of aristocratic British families in `famille-rose’ enamels, but sometimes amusing mistakes occurred — as when a family motto ‘Unite’ appeared on hundreds of pieces as ‘Untie’. A service such as this, or with unusual associations, will fetch far more than ordinary services. Other designs included delicately painted Chinese flowers, birds and family scenes, and an exotic pattern of overlapping coloured leaves known as the `Tobacco Leaf’ design. (more…)

Whether made to display the family china and silver or just to provide storage, the best pieces of dining room or kitchen furniture, from aristocratic Adam sideboards to humble dressers, are now worth thousands of pounds.

The sideboard can be traced back to the side table, originally used for serving food. The dresser, on the other hand, probably developed from the 17th-century court cupboard used to display plate. (more…)

Between the Metropolitan Railway, whose line ran north-west out of London through Wembley, Pinner and Chorleywood to Amersham, created the concept of Metro- land as an ideal place for city workers to live, outside the spread of London but conveniently linked to it by train. Given the vogue for fresh air and sunlight, outdoor sports and hiking, it was an inviting prospect which speculative builders helped to fulfil with a rash of tidy suburban homes in the revived ‘Queen Anne’ style. (more…)

Dining and other upright chairs are among the most abundant of antiques and range in price from a few pounds to many thousands. Persistent hunting may enable you to assemble a set, one or two at a time, for a bargain price.

Among chairs with an upright back, comfortvaries a good deal. Dining chairs generally have an upholstered or caned seat and a wooden back, and may have arms — in which case they are known as arm or elbow chairs, or carvers. Upright dining chairs without any arms are also known as side chairs because they were placed around the sides of the room when not in use. Virtually identical chairs were also used as occasional chairs in the drawing room. (more…)

Few people in any era have the will or the means to refurnish their home in totally contemporary style. Most make do with hand-me-downs and inherited pieces, adding some special purchases which may be chosen to complement what is already there.

The distinctive flavour of this 1890s room is the result of long accumulation. Yet among its traditional furniture is a display cabinet in the style of the forward-looking designer Robert Edis, made in the 1880s and looking somewhat out of place here. This is a middle- class home — comfortable and manageable. A grander home would have separate rooms for different social and domestic functions but in this one the same room is used for writing letters, doing needlework, playing music and entertaining guests to afternoon tea. (more…)

Heavy handed Decor

Cosy family life remained the aim of mid- Victorians. This still demanded comfortable furnishings such as deep-buttoned chairs, ottomans and chesterfield sofas, but now everything had a heavier look, showed more wood — along the top of seat backs, for example — and bore fancy carving or fretwork. The front legs of the graceful balloon-back chairs were elaborated into carved cabrioles. (more…)

Ornaments and knick-knacks crowded on every surface. Some were homemade, the result of the family’s female members keeping themselves busy — idleness was regarded as close to moral turpitude. The ladies made arrangements of wax flowers and fruits to sit under protective glass domes. They created pictures from feathers or shells, painted vases, decorated wooden plaques with poker work, embroidered Berl in-woolwork covers for footstools and workboxes, diligently stitched together patchwork for cushion covers, and crocheted antimacassars. (more…)

Piety, propriety and domestic comfort were the aims of early Victorian households. They expected sober family life to ensure the first two and industry gave them goods and money enough for the third. Moral certainty was not equalled by aesthetic certainty, however, and buyers turned to the past to prove their own good taste. (more…)

Setting aside a room of one’s house for books was an idea that developed slowly from the later 17th century onward. Before that, people had few books and these were usually kept in the closet or cabinet. There were outstanding exceptions, however, such as the celebrated diarist Samuel Pepys, who had a library lined with bookcases built especially to hold his collection of books. (more…)

Fashionable rooms now had their wooden floors carpeted, often wall to wall. Draperies were lavish, with fabric not just festooned across rods above the windows and hanging as curtains crossing over at the centre, but sometimes covering the walls as well. Other wall treatments included wallpaper and painted decorative effects such as marbling, graining and stencilling. Walls, furniture coverings and curtains might have the same pattern, frequently of flowers or of country scenes, sometimes of stripes (evoked by the military mood). Pale colours, with yellows and lime-greens among the most popular, gave rooms an airy look. (more…)