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Posted on 24/09/2018 by Random Treasure

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World-Class Provenance

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Blog posts . . .

Cat Murder Mystery

In this piece I’m setting out to prove that the 1747 death by drowning of Horace Walpole’s cat Selima was ...
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Lounge Lizard: Chapter 3

My self-imposed task in this piece is to establish a connection between a Lounge Lizard called Captain Jefferson Davis Cohn ...
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Lounge Lizard: Chapter 2

In my last blog piece I introduced readers to Jefferson Davis Cohn, colourful character, lounge lizard, charmer, wealthy businessman, horse ...
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Lounge Lizard: Chapter 1

I’ve been blogging recently about the contents of an old leather suitcase which belonged to a very wealthy gentleman from ...
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A Day at the Races

In my last-but-one blog piece (called Flea Market Supplementary) I said I’d get back to you about two envelopes discovered ...
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Degenerate

A picture that I bought last week in my local auction room features a portrait of a 71-year-old Jewish gentleman, ...
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Flea Market Supplementary

I ended my last blog piece like this: “When Mary’s sister-in-law heard that Mary was going to take a stall ...
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Flea Market

My wife and daughters worry that I might be a hoarder. For evidence, they cite the fact that every horizontal ...
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A Quiz of Three Jugs

Here are three jugs. They were in a single lot at a recent Edinburgh auction. I liked the look of ...
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World-Class Provenance

I’ve hit the big time! I have joined the ranks of the greatest billionaire collectors of the world. J Pierpont ...
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A Tale of Two Jugs

It’s been quiet on the blog front in recent weeks. Preoccupied with the summer holidays and a whole bunch of ...
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Pottery and poetry

I’ve been thinking about figurative versus abstract art. Art that tells stories versus art that uses only colour or pattern ...
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Expert Connoisseur

I’ve always been highly suspicious of anyone who is described, or describes him- or herself, as a connoisseur. It’s a ...
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A good week

Readers of the Random Treasure blog will know that I spend much – ok, too much – of my time ...
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Scotland’s First Khedival Khayamiya

Earlier on this blog I posted a piece entitled “Staples” about a Chinese porcelain bowl bought in 2012 at an ...
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The Joy of Jugs

The Random Treasure Blog is making a second guest appearance on the Talking Antiques blog with a new piece entitled ...
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Selling Flags

There was a period of a couple of years after I retired from full-time work and before I started writing ...
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Pua Kumbu

One day in the summer of 1969 my late brother Philip drove home in his latest second-hand car. It was ...
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Outmoded but not quite forgotten

I never buy nineteenth century engravings. Don’t even like them much. Especially those dark, dreary, ponderous reproductions of high Victorian ...
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What the devil is it?

Sometimes you come by an object which is so inexplicable and so far outside your experience that you wonder if ...
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Utility

I've written a new piece about this coffee table, which is a rather more interesting object than you might think ...
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Nativity

Since I am writing this blog piece in the week before Christmas, I’ve picked a seasonal object from my small ...
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Challenge

One morning last week, I passed two-and-a-half cold, damp, miserable hours cleaning my slabbed front garden path with a pressure ...
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Flambé

If I had an unlimited budget and a choice from of all the art and antique objects in the world, ...
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Conservation

You might have read in my last blog post that the 1617 Andro Hart Psalm Book which was formerly my ...
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New favourite

A few months ago I blogged about my then favourite possession in the whole world, a little book of psalms ...
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Gothic Fantasy Revisited

My last posting was about an oak low stool which I believe to be made from two fragments of mediaeval ...
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Gothic fantasy

To-day’s five top tips for finding Random Treasure among the dross: Be open-minded – any object might turn out to ...
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Not my favourite

A few posts ago I wrote about my favourite thing. This time: my least favourite. I suppose it’s fairly normal ...
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Mysteries

It’s a well-known fact that if you go looking for treasure you’re unlikely to find it. Mostly you won’t find ...
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A small purchase

My dear wife Frances has for several decades been accustomed to seeing me returning home from a visit to the ...
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Turkmen Guls

I have passions for many different types of object. Some of my interests (e.g. drawings and engravings) haven’t developed enough ...
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Going Virol

I was supposed to be looking at the trains. That's what you do on a visit to the National Railway ...
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Guess the Date

I make no claims to expertise in any class of antiques whatever. Not enough focus, not enough application, not sufficiently ...
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Staples

In February 2012 my local Edinburgh auctioneer announced that he was holding an out-of-town Saturday sale in Aboyne, a charming ...
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My favourite thing

This is awkward. I want to tell you the conclusion of a story, but you don’t know the story. If ...
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Catapulted down Memory Lane

In my last posting I mentioned Philip Mernick, who runs a marvellous website about hunting jugs. I had never heard ...
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Hunting Jugs

One of the many subjects about which I know virtually nothing is the subject of Hunting Jugs. These jugs: “were ...
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From the past but not a blast

Question: What’s the difference between the two pieces of pottery pictured above? Answer: Around 30 years. They are both made ...
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Wagireh

This old rug measures 4'10" by 3'7". It’s in poor condition with all four edges frayed and some fairly threadbare ...
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Terracotta Friar

Here's a fat jolly friar or monk, bought (as usual) in my local auction room. He's simply but nicely modelled in ...
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Mantelshelfies

My wife and I are extremely fortunate to live in a house with five intact Victorian fireplaces. These afford endless ...
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Walter Mawer’s Stone

The house being full of stuff, I’ve started to buy interesting things for the garden, in the hope of finding ...
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Berlin Woolwork

In 1973 I was working in a junior office job for a large housing association. My department was based in ...
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Not a Rembrandt

Every year (well, for the last two years and maybe again next year) I spend a very enjoyable week’s intensive ...
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Saint Benedict

A few years ago at a local auction I bought a wooden sculpture on a whim. It didn’t cost much. ...
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Slipware

Here’s a picture of my latest purchase – another big brown pot to add both to my large collection of ...
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Anticlimax follows anticipation

A few posts ago I wrote about the excitement and anticipation of being asked to have a look at our ...
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Cataloguing (3)

I’m not a completist. Unlike many collectors I feel no compulsion to get uninterrupted sets of cigarette cards, runs of ...
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Cataloguing (2)

To help prevent my collections from turning into someone else’s Random Treasure, I decided to catalogue them. I reckoned that ...
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Cataloguing

In the past few weeks I’ve been attempting to produce a catalogue of some of my collections. This is mainly ...
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Anticipation

An old university friend got in touch with my wife Frances last week and invited us for lunch. We’re going ...
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First Post: Where to Start?

Not sure how to start this blog, so I’ll begin in the middle and tell you about what I got ...
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