Antiques & Collectables

Antiques @ Willi

Well this weekend was the Annual Williamstown Antiques & Collectables Fair. The Rotary Club of Hoppers Crossing have been running this great little winter event for the last 15 years and it is probably my favourite Metropolitan antiques and collectables fair of the year. I’m not a big fan of the large pretentious fairs where [...]

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19th Century Scrapbooks

One of the little ‘fill-in’ 5 minute programs that ABC-TV (Australian) puts on to fill the gap between shows (where other channels would put commercials) is called Hidden Treasures. It’s presented by Betty Churcher who presents an insider’s guide to the ‘Hidden Treasures’ of the National Gallery of Australia that are rarely on public display. [...]

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The Beauty of Belleek Porcelain

Time for another visit to my collections and this time a look at Belleek porcelain. In 1858 Belleek was a small village owned by the Bloomfield family of Castle Caldwell in County Fermanagh, Ireland. John Caldwell Bloomfield had recently inherited the estate from his father and he was anxious about providing work for his tennants [...]

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Ballarat Antiques Fair 2007

Labour Day weekend in Victoria heralds the Moomba Festival, the Ballarat Begonia Festival and the Annual Ballarat Antiques Fair. Those alert readers who have been following my Collectables series, browsing through my many and varied collections, will know that I’m a bit addicted to ‘old stuff’ (see Confessions of a Collectaholic). So an Antiques Fair [...]

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Toby Jugs – Will the real Toby Philpot please stand up?

Tope: To drink intoxicating liquor to excess esp. habitually hence, Toper (Toby) – Oxford Concise Dictionary Although man has been fashioning vessels in his own image since he first discovered how to make waterproof containers out of clay, the Toby Jug is a particularly British phenomenon. Many stories abound over who was the original ‘Toby’ [...]

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TG Green – Cornishware

In an earlier post I wrote about my TG Green Streamline collection. I thought it might be time to introduce my other TG Green collection: Cornish Kitchen Ware. We covered a brief history of the TG Green Pottery in the previous post so I won’t go over that again. But the Cornishware story is interesting [...]

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A Stroll Down Lilliput Lane

Time to write about another of my collections. This time it’s miniature cottages. There are a number of firms making these nowadays, but the ones I collect are from Lilliput Lane. Apart from having a very cute name, they’re one of the longest running firms in this market. Lilliput Lane was founded in 1982 by [...]

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Walk softly and carry a long hatpin

The Age of the Hatpin (ie. that which secures a lady’s hat to her head, not a badge that is worn on a hat) lasted from approx. 1850-1930. Its invention during the Victorian years revolutionised women’s fashion which previously had revolved around the bonnet style of headgear; relying on ribbons to keep it secure. Remember [...]

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T G Green Streamline

Time for another rummage behind the scenes of one of my collections. Back in 1846 Thomas Goodwin Green, son of a Lincolnshire corn merchant, had a fancy for a lady by the name of Mary Tenniel (sister of Sir John Tenniel the famous illustrator of such books as Alice in Wonderland). He asked her to [...]

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H&K Tunstall – The Delicious Dozen

Well I’m overdue for a post, having joined the rest of the victims of the Christmas Scramble described in my earlier post. So I thought I’d write about my collection of H&K Tunstall porcelain in my ongoing collections category series. Hollinshead and Kirkham, originally of Burslem in Staffordshire, moved their pottery works to nearby Tunstall [...]

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