My wife and daughters worry that I might be a hoarder. For evidence, they cite the fact that every horizontal surface in my house is crowded with ceramics of all descriptions. And there are all those shelves and boxes-full which seem to have aggregated in the attic. And the groaning shelves lining much of the … More Flea Market

Here are three jugs. They were in a single lot at a recent Edinburgh auction. I liked the look of one of them, so I bid £30 and won them. Of course all three came home with me. More jugs. Just what I need. They didn’t all have to come home. I could have just … More A Quiz of Three Jugs

I’ve hit the big time! I have joined the ranks of the greatest billionaire collectors of the world. J Pierpont Morgan. John D Rockefeller. J Paul Getty. Henry Clay Frick. Calouste Gulbenkian. William Randolph Hearst. Andrew Mellon. An assortment of Rothschilds. And me. What gives me the effrontery to claim membership of this illustrious band? … More World-Class Provenance

It’s been quiet on the blog front in recent weeks. Preoccupied with the summer holidays and a whole bunch of other highly pleasurable activities, I just haven’t had time or inclination to settle down to serious writing – or even to frivolous and facetious jotting. If I sound intolerably smug to any reader who has … More A Tale of Two Jugs

I’ve been thinking about figurative versus abstract art. Art that tells stories versus art that uses only colour or pattern or shape or material. Very possibly I could do some research to find out what the art theory experts have to say about this difficult topic. Probably a lot, very little of which I would … More Pottery and poetry

I’ve always been highly suspicious of anyone who is described, or describes him- or herself, as a connoisseur. It’s a term you frequently hear bandied around in art and antiques circles. But what does it mean? According to the artist and critic Jonathan Richardson in his book Two Discourses, published in 1719, connoisseurship has three … More Expert Connoisseur

Readers of the Random Treasure blog will know that I spend much – ok, too much – of my time wandering around charity shops in search of – well, in search of random treasure. More often or not, it’s a fruitless pursuit, and I return empty-handed and frustrated from my local rounds, or sometimes from … More A good week

Earlier on this blog I posted a piece entitled “Staples” about a Chinese porcelain bowl bought in 2012 at an auction in Aboyne, a small town in Aberdeenshire some 30 miles west of Aberdeen. This new posting is about another purchase from the same auction. I paid £5.00 for it. What a great day that … More Scotland’s First Khedival Khayamiya

The Random Treasure Blog is making a second guest appearance on the Talking Antiques blog with a new piece entitled The Joy of Jugs. You can read it here. The piece is about jugs. I bet you could tell that from the title.   

There was a period of a couple of years after I retired from full-time work and before I started writing my book Random Treasure when I became a semi-serious antique dealer. Which is to say that I trawled the house for possessions that I could live without, and started selling them off fairly systematically. And … More Selling Flags