Showing posts with label antiques and collectables. Show all posts
Showing posts with label antiques and collectables. Show all posts

My Husband's Extraordinary Hand Carved Chess Set - and the insect bite that nearly cost him his life.

                          


My husband, artist Alan Lees, used to be one of Scotland's foremost woodcarvers, making everything from huge outdoor carvings to gorgeous sculptural rocking horses. Then along came serious arthritis, and even more serious mobility problems. He turned his hand to painting in acrylics, which he could do while he was sitting down, and he has had some success with his work in his unique 'outsider art' style. In fact his work has been described as a cross between Lowry and Bruegel.

But that wasn't the only problem. 

Somewhere in the middle of his arthritis treatment, he was in the garden, when he was bitten on the finger by a horsefly, or cleg as they are called in Scotland. At first we thought it was just an insect bite, but within an hour or two, his finger had swollen and he was in excruciating pain. Not only that, but by bed-time he was running a temperature, shivering and shaking. An on-call doctor came out, looked scathingly at his finger and said 'I don't think you're going to die from an insect bite.'

He almost did. 

By the following morning, it was clear that he was very ill indeed. Another doctor arrived and - fortunately - called for an ambulance immediately. That small bite had turned into full blown sepsis. The speed with which all this happened was horrific. 

There followed a nightmare few months. First of all the wound was drained and he was pumped full of antibiotics. By Friday of that week, though, a consultant breezed into the ward and told him he could go home, before breezing out again. I glanced at the finger and thought that it certainly didn't look too good to me. Alan was still in a lot of pain. The junior doctor who came along to do the discharge paperwork also looked at the finger, pursed his lips, looked embarrassed but was clearly much too scared of summoning the consultant from whatever he was doing on a Friday evening. With hindsight, of course, I should have insisted. 

There followed another horrible night of pain and fever. In the morning, I contacted a friend along the road who had trained as a midwife. She came in, took one look at finger and patient and said 'A & E, right now.' You could actually see the infection tracking through his system from the finger. 

Back at the hospital, he was triaged by a hugely competent and sympathetic senior nurse, whisked through almost immediately and again attached to mega antibiotics. 


Mid chess project 

There followed six operations on the offending finger. A very fine surgeon, a specialist in hand surgery, was determined to save it, although even she almost gave up and suggested amputation. The problem was that the cleg had injected something particularly nasty into him. The hospital had to do some kind of culture to find out which antibiotics might work. Eventually, there had to be skin grafts to try to restore the finger that had been practically eaten away by the bug and really didn't want to heal. For a time, there were daily visits to the surgeon's clinic so that the special dressing could be changed and eventually, weeks and weeks later, it began to heal.

The finger is intact, and still works, albeit it's thinner than it was, and less capable. And it responds painfully to anything but the hottest temperatures, so he has to wear a modified glove, covering it most of the time. For a while, he thought he would never carve again. 


But over lockdown, he set up a small workbench at a slight angle, so that he could sit down to carve and work for a few hours each day at smaller, and less stressful items. He mostly worked indoors, until with the warmer weather he could take it outside for a little while. First of all he completed a spectacular high relief carving of the Last Supper. It took many months, but he finished it.



Last Supper, in lime.

Then he designed and made this chess set: the Hapsburgs and the Ottomans, focusing on the battle at the gates of Vienna, in which the Polish Winged Hussars played a key role in the defeat of the Ottoman army. 


Six months later, you can see the finished item. 


It is stunningly beautiful, intricate, detailed - amazing. The Ottoman side is carved in American black walnut - a lovely hardwood. Alan  found a piece in his workshop that he had been hoarding for almost 30 years! The Hapsburg side is in lime. 

The board is hand painted, and the reverse of the board is also decorated. 

It's a wonderful piece (or many pieces) of highly original work and although we're a bit reluctant to let it go, if you have a passion for chess and deep pockets, do contact us. One or two people have questioned whether you could play with such intricate pieces - but because it's made of wood, it is actually pretty robust. Nevertheless - I reckon it's as much a precious, one off artwork as an everyday set. 

Inspired by this chess set, and how much he loved making it, I think Alan is going to carve more chess sets in the future but realistically, he can only make one or two in a year, these will be very rare items, and will be priced accordingly. 


If you'd like to see more pictures, and discover more of Alan's work for sale, including the Last Supper carving, you can go to our Etsy store, the 200 Year Old House. 











My Dolls' House at Christmas

 My late mum always wanted a dolls' house. When my dad spent a couple of years working in Vienna, as a visiting expert at the International Atomic Energy Commission there, my mum came back with a collection of dolls' house miniatures, picked up here and there, some new, some vintage. But she never got her dolls' house. 

I'm still not sure why, because my dad would have bought her one or - more likely - made one for her. He was good at making things. But perhaps she just enjoyed collecting the miniatures and dreaming about the house. Later, my husband made a dolls' house for me, but although it was beautiful, it was always a bit too big for the space available, so eventually we passed it on to a young relative. 

Then, a few years ago, Alan found the second hand house of my dreams and it turned up on Christmas Day. It's a solid plywood Georgian mansion, with six rooms, plus stairs and hallways, in its beautiful interior. It may have been made from one of those patterns that you used to get in Hobbies Magazine. 

I just love it. 

I furnished it with my mum's pretty miniatures, and then spent the next few years adding to them. It is a bit over-furnished now, but I don't care. Cluttered is a good look for a dolls' house. 

Over the years, I've found more things to go in it, finding them in charity shops from time to time. Because I do some part time dealing in antique textiles, to supplement my writing income, I visit our local saleroom quite a lot, and one week I came home triumphantly carrying several boxes full of miniature furniture and accessories. I sold many of them - regretfully. The stunningly beautiful hand crafted Victorian style book case, with shelves full of real miniature books, was much in demand and since it didn't really fit into my own house, I had to let it ago, along with other things like garden furniture. I could have a garden, but again, space is short in this full size cottage. The one thing I haven't yet done is make curtains. That's on the to do list for this year. 

Anyway - here are some more pictures, so that you can peer into the rooms. My two favourite objects in the whole house are in the nursery. If you look closely, you'll find a pair of hand sewn soft toys: hares, I think, given the long ears. One's on the little boy's knee, and one is sitting in the chair. They are tiny and exquisite and no, I didn't make them but somebody did. The other miniatures that I love are the tiny rack of sewing things, in the nurserymaid's room - and that absolutely gorgeous needlework cushion in the comfortable chair in the drawing room. But really, it's full of good things. And if you think this is a strange hobby for a grown woman, I once had a friend who had three. Right enough she lived in a big house herself. But they were magical houses. 

I don't know quite why I love this house so much, but I think it's very much tied in with being a writer. For me, it has a life of its own. Although not, I hope, the kind of life that the haunted dolls' house has in the M R James story of the same name. But it does represent a kind of escapism for me. A form of play that certainly bears some resemblance to the kind of 'play' most writers indulge in when they play around with ideas and characters and made up places and spaces. 

When literal people say - as they occasionally do - where does the cook sleep, and where is the bathroom? - I tell them that there is, of course, a lot more to the house. 

You're just not seeing all of it. But in my imagination, I know it's there!


The nursery is probably my favourite.




The main bedroom. 



This is the nurserymaid's room. She does a lot of sewing!




Mr and Mrs Doll, at teatime. 
There's champagne too.




The dining room, all ready for dinner.




My other favourite room - I love this kitchen.





 

My Husband's Amazing Pandemic Woodcarving



Early on in the Covid 19 lockdown, we decided to seize the opportunity of clearing out our garden sheds and - more importantly - Alan's woodcarving workshop at the bottom of the garden. Because Alan suffers with severe and debilitating forms of arthritis, he had spent some years painting, and had hardly used the workshop at all, except as a place to store tools, and occasionally to cut up a piece of wood for framing his pictures. The result was that it had become extremely cluttered. We took our time, and I did most of the heavy lifting and all of the trundling up and down the garden. Good exercise for me. I don't think we had realised just how miserably neglected the place had become. 

If you'd like to see more of Alan's artwork and carving, you'll find his website here.

Buried under a large pile of miscellaneous stuff, we found a huge and beautiful block of lime wood. Many years ago, Alan had been asked by an American customer to carve him a depiction of the Last Supper, and Alan had drawn out the design and started to carve it, before the customer decided that he didn't want it after all. So he had shelved it and got on with other things. Back then, he was making sculptural rocking horses, and doing all kinds of huge outdoor carvings so he wasn't short of work. 

Cue forward all these years - it was early summer, and we gazed at the solid piece of wood - some 30 by 15 inches by 4 inches deep. 'Why don't you finish it?' I asked. So he did. 


Halfway through.

 It has taken him many months but yesterday, he completed it. It was very difficult, because the arthritis affects his hands too, so he could only work for a limited time each day. The other problem is that he can't stand for more than a few moments at a time, so he had to find a way of working that meant he could sit down to do it.   

Fortunately, our clear-out had also uncovered a useful folding workbench, with a tilting facility, that was exactly the right size   for the carving, and that could be set at the right angle. This meant   that he could sit in his comfortable lightweight folding wheelchair, and work away, getting a little fresh air as he did so.

The year and the carving moved on. It took a whole lot longer than he thought it would. This is a highly detailed high relief carving.

Autumn came and with it the usual, west of Scotland wet, chilly   weather. I suggested that he move indoors, so he commandeered  the conservatory, where he could work in warmth and light. And now, in early November, he has just sealed and finished it with some layers of good shellac. 

It is a thing of great beauty. The disciples look as though they are having quite a good time! People keep asking us what we are going to do with it next. Of course, we are hoping to sell it - we need the money - but the price will have to be right. No crafter is ever fully reimbursed for the hours spent on a piece of work, but I'd rather keep this than let it go without Alan being suitably rewarded, especially given his health challenges. And if I'm honest, perhaps because of the subject matter, I for one would rather it went to somewhere like a church, or a museum or a collection where it could be appreciated by lots of people for the minor miracle of craftsmanship that it so obviously is. A friend suggested that it would be good to find an Italian home for it, and I can see what she means. They love and appreciate woodcarving in Italy as perhaps it's never quite valued here.

Meanwhile, we're enjoying it. But all suggestions for its future home, as well as for a woodcarving aficionado with reasonably deep pockets gratefully received! 

If you'd like to see more pictures, you can have a look at it on the Love Antiques site. 






My Fictional Island of Garve: Here It Is!

I thought I'd take this opportunity to show you the excellent map, drawn by cartographer Joe de Pass of my fictional island of Garve. Although Garve features in the Curiosity Cabinet, the Posy Ring, out now, is the first novel in a planned series - the Annals of Flowerfield. I'm working on the next book, The Marigold Child, even as I write this! You don't have to read the Curiosity Cabinet to understand The Posy Ring, and all the novels will, to some extent, stand alone. But you will meet a few of the modern day characters from that first book all over again in The Posy Ring. They are no longer central to the story but if you want to know what happens to Donal and Alys and Ben, you can find out now!

That first novel is also, like Joe's map, a nice introduction to the world of the book, so although it isn't essential, you could do worse than seek out The Curiosity Cabinet and read it first.

The Posy Ring: Coming Soon.

The Posy Ring, the first novel in a planned series called The Annals of Flowerfield, is due for publication by Saraband on 12th April. 

Here's what it's all about! 

When antiques seller Daisy Graham inherits an ancient house called Auchenblae, or Flowerfield, on the Hebridean island of Garve, she's daunted by its size and isolation. But the building, its jumble of contents, its wilderness of a garden and the island itself prove themselves so fascinating that she's soon captivated. She's also attracted to Cal Galbraith, who is showing an evident interest in the house and its new owner, yet she's suspicious of his motives – with good reason, it seems.

In parallel with their story runs that of sixteenth-century cousins Mateo and Francisco, survivors from the ill-fated Spanish Armada who find safe passage to the island.


There, one of them falls in love with the laird's daughter, Lilias. The precious gold posy (poesy) ring he gives her is found centuries later. Are its haunting engraved mottoes, un temps viendra and vous et nul autre, somehow significant now for Daisy and Cal?

Well, are they? You'll have to read the book to find out. And if I can get my head down and get out of my usual winter malaise, there will be another one in due course.

I've been dealing in antique and vintage textiles for some years now. It's my other day job alongside the writing. I've always collected textiles, always loved finding out their various histories, and they often find their way into my fiction. But when I realised that my collection was getting a bit too large for comfort, I started dealing in them as well. I've done antique markets and boot sales as a buyer and as a seller, and still go along to browse and buy.  As soon as online selling became possible, I set up a dedicated eBay shop, specialising in textiles with the occasional foray into vintage clothes, teddy bears and costume jewellery, although I'm about to transfer my 'niche' shop to another site called Love Antiques. 

The fictional Isle of Garve
I've known for some time that I wanted to write a novel about this world, and I've always thought how wonderful it might be to find a house full of 'stuff'. but I've also known how horribly challenging it would be. How on earth to sort out the rubbish from the treasures? It's difficult enough when you buy a large quantity of boxes of old linens and lace at auction. I've hauled things about, (textiles are incredibly heavy especially when linen is involved!) and spent hours deciding what to keep, what to sell, and what to recycle back into the saleroom or charity shop. I've observed too - I am a writer, first and foremost - watching the hierarchies in the salerooms and among the dealers, watching the quirks of various auctioneers, watching how the whole business works. 


I've also lived in a two hundred year old house for almost forty years, so I know all about the challenges of old buildings as well. Taking on an old house when you're rich is still, I think, challenging. (Not that I've ever been rich enough to experience it.) Doing it without enough money to tackle it properly can be an ongoing nightmare. 

But this isn't all that the book is about. Because in parallel with the modern day story, there's the story of the house and the island at other times, layers of events, people, relationships, like the layers built up in the agates I sometimes find on our nearby beaches. Nobody goes back in time in the Posy Ring. It isn't that sort of novel. But the past always, in some sense, influences the present, and various artefacts discovered in the present day still have something of their past clinging inexorably to them. 

As nice Paul in the BBC antiques programme called Flog It is so fond of saying - 'That's what it's all about.'

Meanwhile, I've never yet found a posy - or 'poesy' - ring. But I sure wish I could! 

Young Woman in Yellow - my inspiration for Lilias.

Remembering My Mum - Vintage Dresses, Embroidery and Other Nice Things.

Detail from embroidered dress.
Like most  people, I miss my late mum and dad at Christmas almost more than any other time of year. And I've been thinking about my mum a lot recently because I've just dedicated my new novel to her. The Posy Ring is due to be published in April, by Saraband.

It is the first in a series of novels about an old house called Auchenblae on a fictional Scottish island called Garve and it is, among many other things, about the joys and tribulations of dealing in antiques and collectables. My mother was the person who introduced me to jumble sales and salerooms and I still find myself missing our trips to antique markets, salerooms and charity shops.


Mum loved jumble sales and salerooms.
My first clear memory of this is when we spent a year in London, when I was just coming up to ten years old. Mum was a 'Leeds Irish' lass, and Leeds was also where I spent the first years of my life, but Dad was working at a research institute in Mill Hill, and we moved there, temporarily. Posh Mill Hill was awash with church jumble sales. It was like something from a Barbara Pym novel. Mum loved them and I went along too. I still have one or two of the things she acquired there, none of them very valuable, but interesting all the same. (She never, however, acquired the cloche hat that our London landlady insisted she should wear!)

Midi Dress, Vogue Paris Original,1970

When I was twelve we moved from Leeds to Scotland, and mum discovered salerooms. There were two of them in our town at that time, and mum and her new friend, Ellie Hamilton, went into one or other of them just about every week. Lots of the furniture that we still possess came from those salerooms, as did lots of china. Mum was a sucker for a fine piece of porcelain and there are still three or four pretty Victorian tea services lurking in my cupboards.

My lifelong obsession with antique textiles.
When I grew older, I would occasionally bid for mum, if there was something she particularly wanted and couldn't be there. I also started bidding on my own behalf from time to time. I loved - and have never stopped loving - antique and vintage textiles of all kinds. It was the start of a lifelong obsession, and when online selling became possible, I began to deal in them as well. I never stopped writing. That will always be my main occupation. But as most writers know, it never quite makes enough to keep the wolf from the door, so has to be supplemented in some way.

Jean Muir, Vogue Couturier Dress
Gorgeous Vogue Patterns 
Mum didn't collect textiles, but she made them. Her sisters had worked in tailoring factories and although mum didn't, she learned a lot from her siblings. She was a fine seamstress, a fine embroiderer, good at knitting and crochet. If it could be made, she could do it. In primary school, I remember a felt skirt she made for me with an appliqued toy train around the bottom and a gingham print dress with a cloth doll, with yellow plaits, that sat in the pocket. I loved fashion and later my mum made Vogue Paris Original and Couturier patterns: the exquisite Jean Muir dress, the embroidered Mexican smock, the crocheted smock, the amazing midi dress with the weighted hem, when, as a student, I couldn't possibly have afforded such a thing. I have many of them still, although I can't get into most of the dresses these days. But I can't bear to let them go either. They remind me too much of my mum. She stitched her love into them, as women so often do. I wish I still had the Doctor Zhivago maxi coat with fur around neck and hem that she made for me when everyone wanted to look like Lara.

I also wish I still had the heavily embroidered linen smock with a design that ran over the yoke and right down the sleeves. It was even more beautiful and intricate than the dress below, also made by my mum. I still regret giving that one away, many years ago, even though it went to a friend, and I still wonder if it is floating around somewhere online. If you see or posses such a thing - do let me know! I would dearly love to have it back again.

Me and my mum

Precious Vintage
By the way - if you too think you might like to make a bit - or a lot - of extra income from dealing in antiques and collectables, I wrote a small eBook about it some time ago: Precious Vintage. It's very personal, and it doesn't pretend to be a definitive guide. But it does contain a number of useful hints and tips for anyone wanting to dip a toe in these fascinating waters!





Antique of the Month: A Precious Reminder of My Polish Family History

A tiny silver and enamel mirror - a rare survival.

I might fit in more than one antique this month. After all, Christmas is a time when this old house really comes into its own and it's nice to reflect on the history of a few precious possessions - not particularly precious in terms of monetary value, but only in terms of the memories they hold for me, like my piano that I wrote about last month,

This month, it's a tiny mirror, no more than three inches long. It's in silver, although since it came from eastern Poland, there's no hallmark. The back has pale cream enamel in an intricate and pretty design that doesn't show up too well in the photograph, and I'm afraid the glass on the other side has been somewhat damaged, although you can still just about see through the centre of it.


My grandmother
It belonged to my Polish grandmother, Lucja Szapera and on the right is one of only two photographs I have of her. Looking at that rather pretty, vivacious face, you would never know that her story was not destined to be a happy one. Born into a reasonably wealthy Lwow family (and I don't even know if there were any siblings) she met and married my grandfather, Wladyslaw Czerkawski while they were both very young. She must have thought all her dreams had come true.

Wladyslaw was handsome, charming and potentially rich. He had inherited one large country estate while still a child, and stood to inherit another, the one where he was born. Many years later, my great uncle Karol Kossak, who had been one of his closest friends, having married into the family, told me that he had been 'fond of the ladies' as I'm sure he was.

I met Lucja once. My grandfather not at all. He died of typhus on the long march east and is buried in Bukhara on the Silk Road. Long after the war, the Red Cross found my grandmother and put my father in touch with her. By that time my refugee father had met and married my mother in Leeds, and made a life for himself. Everything the Polish side of the family had once possessed was deep behind the Iron Curtain. The English/Irish side of the family had very little to begin with, but that's another story.

Lucja came to visit us in Leeds while I was still a young child but I have almost no memory of her except as an old and complaining lady who didn't want to be in England and didn't want to be where she was in Poland either. She wanted the promised land of her past. Her health was poor, she had lost everything that mattered to her, and she never came to terms with it.

My father Julian, Wladyslaw and Lucja in happier times. 

Before the war, she had already left my grandfather and returned to the city. My father divided his time between the two. I think she had discovered that she hated living in the countryside. She disliked the mud and the flies in summer, the cold in winter. I sometimes picture her as a character in a Chekhov play, longing for something else. Besides, the marriage had not turned out at all as she expected. My sociable grandfather loved the countryside. He read. He liked music and painting. He loved horses. He was always planning some new venture, something to make money. Like so many he was property rich and ready cash poor.

Poor Lucja was discontented and when my father was born, she was fairly discontented with him too, although the picture above still portrays an idyllic existence. He always remembered his aunt Wanda, Wladyslaw's sister, with more affection, although being a very kindly man all his life, he never really elaborated on the reasons why. As for my grandfather - he was already conducting an affair with the wife of a local schoolteacher by the time war put an end to all such distractions and, ultimately, to him.

Nevertheless, my father brought this little mirror with him to Yorkshire, and thence to Scotland, via the battle at Monte Cassino in Italy, along with a handful of photographs and nothing else. I'm looking at it now. The older I've grown, the more I've come to sympathise with Lucja. Some can build a good life out of nothing. My father certainly did. But for others - and for all kinds of reasons we can only guess at - it becomes impossible, the hill much too steep to climb.

Who are we to judge?

Handsome Wladyslaw



Some years ago, I wrote a novel called The Amber Heart, based on my Polish family history. It's only available on Kindle at present, I'm afraid, but if you want to know more about the turbulent history of a family very similar to my own, in eastern Poland during the mid 19th century, then you could give it a try.


The Curiosity Cabinet - The Book of My Heart

The Curiosity Cabinet has now been published by Saraband and is available in all sorts of places, including good bookshops like Waterstones, either in stock or to order, online and, of course, from Amazon, where the eBook version is also widely available here and in the US, here.

The gorgeous cover image is by talented photographer Diana Patient.

Of all the books I have written - and I suspect that even includes the Jewel, much as I love Jean and Rab to bits - this may be the 'book of my heart'. I've been wondering why I feel like this about it. It's quite short and it's a simple love story; parallel love stories, really, set in the past and present of a fictional Scottish island called Garve: bigger than Gigha and Coll; a bit smaller than Islay perhaps but with a similar southern Hebridean landscape. Garve is an island full of flowers. The Curiosity Cabinet is not just about the love between two couples - it's about love for a place, the gradually growing love for a landscape. Which may have something to do with the fact that I wasn't born in Scotland. We moved here when I was twelve. I've spent most of my adult life here. And along the rocky road of adjustment, I've grown to love the place and its people.


I've noticed that readers tend to fall into two camps. It's been a popular novel, and people do seem to like it. But some of them find it a 'guilty pleasure' and think it's just a simple romance, while others seem to notice that it's pared down, rather than facile. Which was kind of my intention, but when you're doing this in a piece of fiction, especially a love story, you're never sure that readers are going to 'get' it.

In a way, it doesn't matter at all.

If a reader gets pleasure from anything I've written, then who am I to complain? And I don't. Because lots of readers seem to have enjoyed the book. But all the same, it's gratifying when somebody understands the time and trouble taken, and then takes time themselves to comment on it. One of the best reviews I think I've ever had was from an American reader who said 'this is so tightly written that you could bounce a quarter off of it!'

I must admit, I loved that review! It cheers me up when I'm feeling down, reminds me why I write.


It may well appeal to some fans of the Outlander novels and the TV series, although it isn't a Jacobite tale, nobody goes back in time, and the past/present stories run in parallel only. Interestingly, I wrote the novel version some years after I had written it as a trilogy of plays for BBC Radio 4. (It isn't usually done this way round, but back then, I was writing a lot of radio drama!) These plays, produced by Hamish Wilson, were very popular with the listeners. It was a joyful production and one that those who worked on remember with a great deal of pleasure.


My husband was working as a commercial yacht skipper at the time, here in Scotland. We'd done a bit of travelling off the west coast of Scotland and I was particularly smitten with the landscape and history of these islands. I was beginning to be very much in love with them. The Curiosity Cabinet, in its various incarnations, is the result. I was also feeding my own textile collecting habit, and wanted to find a way of weaving it into my fiction. Not that I've never been lucky enough to own something as precious as an antique embroidered raised work casket. I had to content myself with viewing them in Glasgow's wonderful Burrell museum.

Now, however, there will be more novels in the same vein. I'm deep into a project that is not a direct sequel but a spin-off trilogy of novels, with the same island setting - but in a different part of the landscape, and in different time periods. I'm finding it equally captivating for me, as a writer. The first in the series won't be out till 2018. I'll keep you posted! 

Bear Necessities.

Family of very elderly bears
Some people reading this might not know that, wearing my other hat, I buy and sell antique textiles - partly because the contribution to our family income is essential when it comes to buying more writing time, and partly because I'm daft about them and have been since I was in my teens.

But just occasionally, I'm tempted by teddies as well. And last week, it happened again. I managed to acquire the sad little family of bears you see on the left. Mostly, I don't keep them - I rehome them and these will be no exception. I'd quite like to keep them and add them to my own collection but I can't afford to. Mind you, I did buy a couple of elderly Chad Valley teds a few years ago and they are still sitting in my living room just because one of them is so cuddly, even more cuddly than my own old bears, Mr Tubby and Teddy Robinson, that I can't 'bear' to let them go.

Anyway, this quartet of teds came together in the same auction lot and obviously belonged together and I'm not planning to split them up. Like rescue dogs that have been brought up together, I'll try to find some sympathetic arctophile to take all of them. The biggest ted is the most valuable. This isn't always the case, but he isn't just any old bear, he's a pretty rare antique bear. He has no labels and no, he isn't a Steiff, but with his triangular face, his long arms and longish humped body, his quite chubby legs with definite ankles, his stitched nose, his boot button eyes and low set ears and most of all because of his slightly pointed pads on his feet, I think he's probably a very very early Ideal bear all the way from the USA - pre WW1 - which is a long time to survive. He's a bit threadbare, he's a bit wobbly, and he has some trouble about the feet where you can see some of his wood wool stuffing - but he's so smiley and engaging that I'm sure somebody somewhere will love him as much as I do and - more importantly - as much as somebody so clearly did in his long, long past.

Smiley and engaging.
He was very dirty and I have a feeling he had been kept with his companions in an attic - or at least that's what he looked like. The only thing I've done is given him a very gentle, very cautious clean up to remove the worst of the grime and show him up in his true honey colours. With him there's a much smaller blue bear - not half so old, I'm sure, but jointed and with nice eyes. There's a chubby little Japanese bear - much faded pink wool - with a working squeak (like Piglet!) which surprised me when I was brushing him very gently with a soft brush and touched his tummy. And finally there is a very strange creature with upright arms, no eyes, a terribly threadbare knitted jumper and feet that look as though they were intended to be booted at one point. He has clearly been loved almost to bits and only rescued by a grubby canvas covering, crudely stitched. Where it is coming apart, you can just see that there might once have been mohair or similar beneath - but if you touched him too much, he would fall apart!

Woppit? Loved almost to bits.
Looking at him, the shape and size of him, I think he was once a Merrythought Woppit Bear - issued in 1956 from the Story of Woppit cartoon strip. Almost unrecognisable, for sure, but I think that's what he was! His better known (and better preserved) cousin is, of course, Donald Campbell's Mr Whoppit. This one could do with some eyes, and possibly a whole knitted suit, to keep him together. But I find him touching beyond belief - somebody has clearly loved him very, very much.  

That's the problem with dealing in something you love - it's always so difficult to let them go! Meanwhile, if you think you too might like to try your hand at buying and selling antique and vintage items to add to the household income, I've written an eBook about it. It's called Precious Vintage and it's available across all platforms, but I'll give you the Amazon Kindle link, here in the UK and here in the USA. 


New Way of Blogging for a New Year

The view from my cottage window.
I'm taking a little break for Christmas - and let me take this opportunity again to wish you a very happy and peaceful festival - and a New Year that brings you all you could wish for you and yours.

Oh, and a little publishing success wouldn't go amiss, if that's what you're after. Or a lottery win. That would be nice.

But before I sign off for a few days, I've been thinking about making some changes to this blog - posting more often, but not so many carefully crafted (and let's face it quite long!) posts. Well, maybe once a month. But these days, we seem to be drowning in 'how to write' or 'how to publish' or 'how to find a publisher/agent/the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow' posts. I don't know about you, but I'm getting a bit bored with it all. Besides, this was never meant to be a 'how to' blog although my pretty extensive experiences of writing, publishing and being published - as well as being rejected - may occasionally be helpful if that's what floats your boat.

Anyway - I've decided to do something a wee bit different. During 2015, I'm going to blog as often as I can find the time about whatever takes my fancy. I have two or three big projects on hand. I'll be researching, writing, reading, writing some more, trying to earn a living, trying to earn a better living - as well as buying and selling antiques, which is the other way I try to earn a living. Most of the posts will be shorter - and some will be very short - but more frequent. I hope. Let's see how we get on.

I plan to blog about the difficulties, the disappointments and frustrations, as well as the good stuff.  Or maybe I just mean the realities. And what it all feels like. And why - when  push comes to shove - I've never really wanted to do anything else.

Meanwhile, for a whole week, from 24th December, you can download my big Eastern European historical novel The Amber Heart onto your new Christmas Kindle for a bargain price. You'll find it here in the UK and here in the US. Hope you enjoy it.

www.wordarts.co.uk


Precious Vintage - Another Potential Income Source in a Precarious World.

For many years now, I've been supplementing my writing income by dealing in antique and vintage items, mostly on a part time basis, although occasionally, when the income from writing has been particularly abysmal, I've devoted a lot more time to this 'second string' to my bow. I used to write for BBC Radio 4 which was a good way of earning a day to day living, but when commissions pretty much dried up about ten or fifteen years ago, I had to find another income source.

It wasn't that I stopped writing drama, just that the BBC, for reasons they have never divulged, stopped wanting what I wrote. I went from being an experienced radio writer with more than 100 hours of well reviewed and varied radio drama under my belt, to being the kiss of death on any submission, almost overnight. There had been no falling out, nothing that I could ever put my finger on. And I still had producers queuing up to work with me. It's just that almost nothing we proposed was ever accepted.  I write this not so much to complain - well, it's a bit of a complaint, or I wouldn't be human! - but really to point out the tenuous nature even of a career that appears to be quite successful.

In reality, it was a blessing in disguise, like so many of these unpleasant crises can be, because it forced me to take stock and make other plans.

With hindsight, and although I had loved radio and had thoroughly enjoyed most of what I had written for this most imaginative of media, I should have quit well before I was pushed. We are much too inclined to stay with what we know. We are also - of course - reluctant to abandon something that pays the bills. But even so, any career that relies on submission and commission from an organisation as capricious as Aunty, is skating on very thin ice indeed. It's one of the reasons why I keep banging on about the need for writers, like all creatives, to be well aware of business realities. You need to think of yourself as a sole trader rather than a humble supplicant, and act accordingly! Most of us learn this quite late in the day.

My husband and I are both freelances, so times were hard for a while. But two things came to my rescue. I had been collecting antique and vintage textiles in particular since I was very young and first went to the saleroom with my mum, who loved pottery and porcelain. Over the years, I had amassed not just the textiles, but a certain amount of knowledge about them. Meanwhile, fiction writing had really taken over from drama for me (although I would never say never if the opportunity to work on a new stage play came along) and my love of antiques in general and textiles in particular began to find its way into my novels and stories, especially my historical fiction. The Curiosity Cabinet and The Physic Garden both involve embroidery and textiles, albeit as only one among many themes in both novels. Some of my short stories involve antiques too - including a few ghost stories.

It occurred to me that one way of filling the income gap left by radio might be to try dealing in antique and vintage collectables. With the wealth of television programmes and magazine articles as well as the general interest in 'vintage', which I had loved well before it became fashionable, this seemed like an idea whose time had come. But my current home area was not the ideal place to take on shop premises and besides, I didn't want that kind of commitment. I had too much writing to do.

It didn't matter. The relative ease of selling online meant that I could work from home. One of the most appealing aspects though was the idea of being in charge, taking control. It's hard to explain to somebody who hasn't been involved with the submission/rejection process central to the 'creative industries'  how difficult it can be. We're not talking about the necessary learning process here. We're talking about a giant game of snakes and ladders during which you can be an experienced professional, climbing the ladders (not making any fortunes, but surviving) but can suddenly and without warning, find yourself sliding all the way down to the bottom of the board within a matter of weeks. In these circumstances, my love of vintage became very precious indeed.


I've been dealing in Scottish and Irish antiques, mainly textiles, but really, whatever takes my fancy, for more than ten years now, and have learned a lot along the way. I've also found my research invaluable in providing inspiration for so much of my fiction. The other factor that helped immeasurably was the ease with which it is now possible to publish, and republish work in eBook form, the possibility of being a 'hybrid' writer, of working with a publisher on certain projects, self publishing others. It makes for a complicated but undeniably interesting working life.

I notice that an increasing number of my friends and colleagues are willing to try their hand at antique and collectable dealing, either online, or at antique markets, or with a combination of both. Often it's because they could do with some money to supplement the family finances but need something that can be part time and flexible. It also occurred to me that some of them were very knowledgeable about their favourite area of collecting, more knowledgeable than some of the dealers I had met, but a little bit nervous of dipping a toe into the waters of selling.

That was when I thought about writing a short guide - by no means a definitive 'how to'  - but something that summarised all the hints and tips I had learnt over ten years or more of trading. Precious Vintage is the result. I should caution that this is in no way a 'get rich quick' scheme. However you decide to do this, hard work and good customer service are the key to making some kind of income. As with writing, other people's experience will be different from yours, and that's fine. But if you've been clearing out your granny's attic and wondering if you might have a go at some trading, then this little eBook guide might be a helpful preliminary read.


You can download it on Amazon UK here. 
The guide is written from a UK perspective, but since so much buying and selling is conducted worldwide, readers elsewhere may find it helpful. You can download it on Amazon.com here.

Drowning in Linens

Edward Ellice 
As some of my readers will know, when I'm not writing novels and stories, I buy, sell and collect antique textiles. I quite often find myself doing talks about them - and writing about them as well. They're in The Curiosity Cabinet and they're most definitely in the Physic Garden. They are also, at the moment, in my house. 
A few weeks ago, I bought FIVE big boxes of old  Irish linen damask tablecloths and large dinner napkins, in our local saleroom. I don't know exactly how many tablecloths there are. Thirty? Forty? I keep losing track because I get distracted by the beauty of them. (And the weight. My God, but they're heavy!) And that's not counting the small mountain of napkins. Some are perfect, some are a little thin but on those, the patterns are so strange that I think they must be very old indeed. 
They are big tablecloths - more than big - huge, some of them 6 yards and more long,  old damask banqueting cloths in the finest, smoothest most beautiful linen imaginable. Old linen of this kind - grass bleached, I reckon - feels like glass under the hand. Cool, impossibly smooth. The patterns are woven in, intricate and very beautiful. I think they were laundered a very long time ago, stored away carefully in tissue paper and not brought out into the light of day for many years. Some of them date from 1870 (the date is woven into the ends) with the names of their previous owners, Eliza and Edward Ellice but some are clearly even older. All textiles have a story to tell, but some are more intriguing than others. 
A little research revealed that this was a late second marriage for both of them, that Eliza was Eliza Stewart Speirs in September 1867 (some of the linens have the initials ESS embroidered on them). Eliza was born to the 'beautiful Miss Stewart of The Field' as an old Glasgow book tells us. That must have been around 1817 or 18 and her father was Mr Hagart of Stirling. (Jean Armour was still alive, Robert Burns had died only some 22 years previously. ) Her grandfather was Thomas Stewart of the Glasgow Field, a calico printer. Was The Field, then, a bleach field? 
Eliza herself married Archibald Speirs on 22nd June in 1836 but he died in 1844 at the age of 39. They had two children.
Archibald's mother was Margaret Dundas, who was born in 1772 and who died (after her son) in 1852.
Somewhere in these boxes of linen is a set of her napkins, or at least they have her name woven into them.
Somewhere, too, is a fine but beautiful tablecloth woven with unicorns, lions, anchors and harps and the date 1849. 
Clearly, then, my boxes contain a whole collection of one family's linens, preserved, laundered, labelled and some of them very beautifully mended - obviously much loved pieces. And as you can see - I can never resist researching things, trying to find out something of their history. It's what brings them to life for me and - I hope - for their new owners. I love the rehoming aspects, because textiles, especially old linens, are so often thrown out, or cut up, or used as dust sheets for decorators! 
As a break from fiction (even I need a break now and then, much as I love writing novels and stories) I'm working on a little guide to buying and selling antiques and collectibles as a way of making some extra cash in these difficult times - not just textiles, although obviously, that's the subject I know most about!  It'll be a few more months before it's ready to go, but I've learned a lot over the last decade or so, and I reckon I might as well pass some of it on to my readers.