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Author Archives: Editor
Angry Gardening and the perils of borrowed landscape
I have a lovely little office – decorated on a theme of imperial naval superiority. It is carved from what was once the house’s original dining room. It is full of bits and pieces. However I spend most of my … Continue reading
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silver and sunshine
I am thrilled with this week’s auction haul. Maidens & Foster had a good estate showing this week and I left a long list of absentee bids. Although I didn’t get my number 1 item – a lovely big Winchcombe … Continue reading
Posted in auction finds etc., practical matters
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Operation Yellow Sofa
We have a yellow sofa. It is a Victorian piece picked up at a Cordy’s sale. When we saw it we were bowled over by its rugged attractions and amused to hear that it had passed unloved through a least … Continue reading
Posted in auction finds etc., furniture
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Mortimer – a friend of Oscar’s.
Some time back I blogged about a small collection of artworks I have accumulated relating to Oscar Wilde – https://decorextremus.wordpress.com/2011/08/13/in-oscars-corner/ – and which hang in the library here. Today the collection was joined by a Mortimer Menpes etching of Cairo acquired … Continue reading
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Third lustreous time around
I’ve been fascinated by recent television programmes around antiques on which dealers say of an item ‘they used to get hundreds of pounds, but now you can expect to get about thirty.’ I think of copper bed warming pans and … Continue reading
Posted in collecting, original surfaces
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The Old Safe (1)
We have for some time been looking to add extra storage to the little china pantry we have created. The room has a large sideboard already overflowing with china and a small bookcase stacked with recipe books. However at the … Continue reading
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What a little moisturiser can do …
Sometime back I bought a little portrait at Dunbar Sloane in Wellington. Well as it happened I bought two on the same night but this is the story of one. I discovered it among a number of small paintings in … Continue reading
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Grandmother’s couch
Sometime ago Douglas and I began to think we probably needed a couch in our bedroom. We wanted to read in more comfort than we could sitting on a chair and wanted something on which you could also slump, in … Continue reading
Posted in auction finds etc., original surfaces, Uncategorized
Tagged art deco, auction, couch, grandmother, sanderson linen
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Epergne fever
An epergne is an Edwardian or Victorian vase-like arrangement for the centre of the dining table. It usually has several stems and allows for a kind of mass effect – utterly decorative and of no practical use. Of course as … Continue reading
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Omega Workshops – Down on the Farm
Today is the first day of a short holiday I’ve cooked up for myself, in order to sit in front of the fire and do nothing. Surprise, surprise then if I wasn’t at Maidens & Foster at 9.30am this morning … Continue reading
Decor Extremus: 