Minton Floor goes on show at St Georges Hall

ONE of Liverpool’s hidden treasures is on display to the public for the next two weeks after the huge success of a previous viewing.
The Minton Tile mosaic masterpiece, at St George’s Hall, is normally hidden beneath wooden flooring.
But yesterday the covering was temporarily removed to allow the Great Hall’s ornate tiles to be revealed in all their glory.
It is the second time this year the floor tiles have gone on public display, after the success of a previous viewing in February. They are usually only revealed once a year.
The floor consists of 30,000 hand crafted tiles, many depicting the world famous Liver Bird along with Neptune, sea nymphs, dolphins and tridents. More than 15,000 people visited the hall when they were unveiled earlier this year. Cllr Tina Gould, who has special responsibility for the Hall and was recently appointed as a trustee, said: “When we last unveiled the floor, the response was huge.
“It makes sense to open it up to the public once again and give anyone who missed it another chance to see this amazing display of craftsmanship. The Hall and its Minton tiles really are one of Britain’s finest Victorian wonders.”
The tiles were first revealed in April 2007 after the completion of a 10-year, £23m restoration of the Grade I-listed Hall.
More than 167,000 people visited St George’s Hall last year, making it one of the city’s top six heritage attractions.The ornate floor was first laid in 1852, at a cost of £3,000. It was designed by Alfred Stevens, the 34-year-old son of a Blandford house decorator.
The mosaic was originally covered in the 1860s to provide a more hardwearing surface for dancing.
The tiles will be on display until August 23, and can be viewed from 11am with the last admission at 4.30pm every day.
There is an admission charge of £1 for adults, with free entry for children. At 2pm each day, there will be a talk on the history of St George’s Hall by experts in the Reid Room, admission by donation.
There are also evening tours available, with admission limited to 25 people. The tours take place every day from 5pm (except Sunday) and cost £5 per head. To book an evening tour call (0151) 225 6909.
Entrance to the venue is from the Heritage Centre on St John’s Lane.

http://www.liverpooldailypost.co.uk/liverpool-news/regional-news/2009/08/12/mosaic-tile-masterpiece-goes-on-public-display-at-liverpool-s-st-george-s-hall-92534-24377761/

A Sign of the Times

Largest antiques wholesaler in the US closes

July saw the final sale to liquidate the enormous inventory that constituted Merritt’s Antiques.
The Douglassville business had been in operation since 1938 and was an established fixture in the Pennsylvania antiques marketplace and well known to European dealers as the largest antiques wholesaler in the United States.
Marty Merritt, 63, went on his first antiques-buying tour to Europe with his mother Mary in 1963, when he was 17. At the peak of trading he would visit the docks in Philadelphia several times a week to pick up containers and recalls passing through Checkpoint Charlie on early buying trips to East Germany.
The sagging economy, the age of the owners and the decline of antiques wholesaling led to the decision to liquidate a massive stock at auction. The Merritt Clock Shop, the largest clock parts business in the US, remains open.

Sotheby’s revenues halved

Second quarter results for Sotheby’s in 2009 show operating revenues down almost half to $167.3m on the first three months of the year thanks largely to the decline in auction totals.
Increased commission rates have helped soften the blow, as has a reduction in losses brought about by guarantees and a 30 per cent fall-off in costs. The result is a net profit of $12.2m, compared to $95.3m for the first quarter.
Looking at the whole of the first six months of 2009, operating revenues fell by just over a half on the second half of 2008 to $221.7m. Meanwhile, the $82.9m profit for the last six months of last year turned into a $22.3m loss from January to June 2009.
Sellers also appear to have adjusted to losing the cushion of guarantees and to curbing their expectations when it comes to reserves and sale prices.
It is hard to tell when the market will pick up again.

St Georges Hall Antique Fair is not Fair with the Trade.

It would be nice to promote a local antique fair in such a monumental building as St Georges Hall in Liverpool. I had been there on the opening event in 2008 declaring on the local radio how good it was for Liverpool in the overhyped European Capital of Culture year. The event spilled over into the wings of the main hall. Not any more.

It looks like the fair is on its slippery slope to oblivion or so the word on the stalls say. The stallholders have been told the organisers are getting messed around by the city council. Hmmm.

It looks likely to me that this antique fair now has a limited lifespan.

Why do the organisers of antique fairs not understand that the long established custom of assisting the trade with free entrance (with a card)in to a fair is something that loses them money. It helps generate trade for the stallholders early in the morning making it easy for them to re-book.

£2.50 for the trade entrance what is the point? Several trade that I know, who spend, walked away from the overzealous organisers of this, what is now a poor excuse for a antique fair, rather than pay. We dont like being held to ransom by the trade I was told by the organiser. Bye Bye.

Collector’s family seeks home for Barnsley designs
13 July 2009
Antiques Trade Gazzette

The 40-piece collection, which covers more than 50 years of Edward Barnsley’s working life and designs, was originally created by a London architect and has been further expanded by his son.
The majority of the pieces were made or designed by Barnsley between the 1930s and the 1960s, with a few pieces designed or made by Peter Waals’ workshop in the 1930s.
The family are now seeking a new home for the collection on permanent loan.
“It is an unusual situation,” said Mr Weller. “The owner is very keen that the collection finds a home where people can appreciate the craftsmanship and supreme skill of those men who produced such wonderful furniture. It is a genuine opportunity for someone who may wish to open their house to the public to have on loan an exceptional collection of Arts and Crafts furniture.”
The collection includes the last pieces to be designed by Edward Barnsley himself before he died in 1987 aged 87: a desk and filing cabinet, together with a matching coffee table.
In 60 years, Barnsley’s workshop made approximately 7000 pieces of furniture, of which at least 1500 were individual designs. He received the CBE in 1945 for his contribution to quality of design and craftsmanship.
The Edward Barnsley Educational Trust was set up in 1980 and the Edward Barnsley Workshop at Froxfield flourishes under James Ryan today.
Contact: 01403 713587.

Herculaneum Pottery held by Liverpool Museums to be put in Permenant Storage

Monday, 29 June 2009

David Fleming Srikes Again, will someone put him out of our misery.
MARITIME DISASTER.
This is no storm in a teacup. It is another peice of our culture at stake.
3000 members of The Northern Ceramics Society are up in arms at the proposals to put the collection of Liverpool Pottery, currently, in the Maritime Museum at the Albert Dock in permanent storage. Yes ....permanent storage we all know what that means. Worse still it is to make way for…. a café, yes a café, this is another misguided attempt to rob us Liverpudlian's of our heritage and blame us for the slave trade by the Fuzzy Felt knob at NML Dr David Fleming.
http://www.northernceramicsociety.org/few people have said that I have been a bit hard on David "Fuzzy Felt" Fleming to which I am of the opinion that I have not been hard enough, he is a walking disaster a nightmare a public relations car crash. I forgot more about Liverepools Culture last week than he will ever know.
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.com/search/label/David%20Fleming This man is single-handedly destroying my culture and turning Liverpool museums into something that resembles the "Wacky Warehouse" where kids run around all over the place with ice cream, screaming and shouting. The sort of place you don’t want to go to anymore. Sudley used to be great he ruined that. It is now called Sadly Art Gallery locally.I attended an excellent study day a decade ago about Liverpool pottery and this was linked in to the permanent exhibition in the Walker, which was the history of Liverpool Pottery.This was then moved out of the Walker and watered down to all those pots with ships on, and was sent to the Maritime Museum, that was bad enough but now to ditch this, is a absolute outrageous act of uneducated nonsense by someone who it has been said should not be running my museums because he is a dimwit. Yes a dimwit without education in the finer things in life, this little tin pot dictator understands is bums on seats.Cant someone put him out of our misery he is a carpet-bagging networker, a disaster wanting to make us all pay for the slave trade when it was nothing to do with me.The NCS were instrumental in bringing to the fore our heritage. Volunteers who have a passion for what they do, educated collectors, whose advise has been sought in building up the collections.Painstaking attention to detail, out on digs in all weathers, in their own time finding the original sites where kilns were, showing us our own heritage, our Georgian heritage, working with the museums under the previous director. And now the tin-pot Fleming does them in with a stroke of his pen, just like he did with the Friends of Liverpool Museums. How can you do this how can a stupid act of getting rid of something as important as our local pottery be replaced by chairs for a café. He hasn’t got a clue.The public bequeathed this whole collection and the public servants need to understand that they work for us not for themselves.“We can’t trust this guy” one elderly gentleman said talking about Fleming.A client of mine, a avid Liverpool collector said to me “He is a b*st*rd” such is the depth of ill feeling towards him.
Someone need to carry the coffe can for this, there is already five times the amount of Liverpool Pottery in storage as is on display at present.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herculaneum_Pottery Huge collections are on display in some of the top American museums and we wont have any.Along with Herculaneum whose factory was at Herculaneum Dock there was Gilbody, Pennington, Richard Chaffers and Co, Philip Christian and more. I want to know about this stuff it’s my history…. this nutter running my museums has to go he is a disaster.

Wedgewood Museum rescue

For a few desperate months earlier this year, it looked as if the revamped £10 million Wedgwood Museum in Stoke-on-Trent was destined to become Britain’s most expensive memorial plaque.
The collapse of Waterford Wedgwood, the pottery manufacturer whose 250-year history it chronicles, hit visitor numbers hard and turned what should have been a thriving industrial site around the museum into a ghost factory. But now the business has been given a lifeline and the spirit of hope was boosted last night when the museum won the Art Fund Prize for museums and galleries — at £100,000, the most lucrative prize in the business.
Wedgewood Museum rescued amid a reccession.
read on
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/visual_arts/article6530916.ece

Lillies BBC production.

This is a picture taken from the set of Lillies, the acclaimed BBC production.

I was asked to do some room sets by the BBC and this is the Artemis house in the series. I originaly had a brilliant mirror for the fireplace but it picked up a reflect.

This was a house in Falkner Square in Liverpool 8.