One day in the summer of 1969 my late brother Philip drove home in his latest second-hand car. It was a dark blue 1964 Triumph Herald 1200 convertible like the one in the picture on the left below. I was envious. He had a regular job but I was an impoverished student. My truly dreadful … More Pua Kumbu

I never buy nineteenth century engravings. Don’t even like them much. Especially those dark, dreary, ponderous reproductions of high Victorian narrative/historical/romantic paintings. My tastes in wall art are more modern, more colourful, more abstract. You see these things all the time in low-end auctions. No-one collects them. More often than not they are left unsold, … More Outmoded but not quite forgotten

Sometimes you come by an object which is so inexplicable and so far outside your experience that you wonder if it has travelled through time and fetched up at your local saleroom by supernatural means. Here’s one such, which I bought a couple of years ago because I can’t stop myself buying unidentified woodcarvings. I’ll … More What the devil is it?

Since I am writing this blog piece in the week before Christmas, I’ve picked a seasonal object from my small collection of early woodcarvings. It’s a panel carved in relief with a nativity scene. The central figure is the Virgin Mary, with halo, kneeling serenely beside the baby Jesus (also with halo), who, frankly, doesn’t … More Nativity

One morning last week, I passed two-and-a-half cold, damp, miserable hours cleaning my slabbed front garden path with a pressure washer borrowed from my friend Ron, stripping off a 20-year accumulation of dirt, moss and algae. A task which: is the kind of thing which as soon as you start it you wish you hadn’t; … More Challenge

If I had an unlimited budget and a choice from of all the art and antique objects in the world, my fantasy collection would probably contain a disproportionately large number of Chinese monochrome ceramics. Anyone who has read my book Random Treasure is already aware that I have in the past owned two spectacular pieces … More Flambé

You might have read in my last blog post that the 1617 Andro Hart Psalm Book which was formerly my favourite possession, has been unceremoniously bumped from pole position in my list of absolute all-time top faves, and replaced by a much more recent volume with infinitely less claim on the attention of scholars. This … More Conservation

A few months ago I blogged about my then favourite possession in the whole world, a little book of psalms printed and bound by the Edinburgh bookseller Andro Hart in 1617. Today I want to own up to having a new favourite, which is also a book but was published in 2017, not 1617. The … More New favourite

  My last posting was about an oak low stool which I believe to be made from two fragments of mediaeval carved column capitals. In the piece, I beefed about my inability to find online images of 15th century foliage to compare with the leaves carved on my stool. I fell back instead on some … More Gothic Fantasy Revisited

To-day’s five top tips for finding Random Treasure among the dross: Be open-minded – any object might turn out to be treasure, whether you know something about it or not Be open-eyed – train your eye to spot quality, age or uniqueness in every class of object that you might encounter Back your hunches – … More Gothic fantasy