If you are a fan of old furniture, or should I say, furniture parts, especially those that have been salvaged and reincarnated, there’s an artist in London I’d like to tell you about.

Rupert Blanchard is a craftsman in pursuit of old drawers to repurpose into cabinets.  But that’s not quite the whole story because not [...]

First moored off the coast of Nantucket in 1854 in an area known as the South Shoals, lightships (essentially floating lighthouses) were strategically placed around the rocky shores to aid passing ships in navigating around the perilous area.  Crewmen on board would raise whale-oil lanterns at night to guide these vessels.
Spending several months at sea, [...]

To my mind, having a lot of dishes in the house means I’m always ready for the holidays. And since I’m an out-of-sight-out-of-mind type, I love to have them easy to reach and on display.  I’m not much for closed cabinets, which always seem forbidding.
That makes me an old-fashioned dish-dresser person. Nothing shows off dishes [...]

Decorating with a vintage bus scroll.  Photo via Country Living

Vintage graphics are one my favorite forms of art.  Advertising, postcards, labels, I’ve collected, framed and decorated with them for years.  It wasn’t until I was browsing through one of my favorite blogs that I discovered bus scrolls.

Antique dealer and fellow San Francisco Bay Area [...]

One of my early jobs after grad school landed me in the Old Master Painting department of an auction house. I had just left a marquee contemporary New York art gallery with live artists and a vibrant scene and suddenly was thrust into the world of paintings by long-dead Europeans based on historical, allegorical, classical [...]

The wonderful thing about auctions is the way certain objects retain their value although the passage of time has drastically reduced their relevance or use. Take tea caddies, which regularly appear at auction and still fetch high prices even though few people have locked up any tea leaves in fancy wooden boxes for going on [...]