The earliest collectors of firearms were probably monarchs intent on amassing armouries to demonstrate their wealth and power. They also became patrons, employing expert craftsmen to create better and ...

Records date back to 1720 for a small glassworks off London's Fleet Street, but Britain's longest running glass house, best known as the Whitefriars factory, really came into its own when James Powell ...

Up to the mid-1670s, English glasses, like their Continental counterparts, were made of soda glass producing thinly constructed, lightweight vessels of fluid design. The patenting by George ...

After 1840, F. & R. Pratt of Fenton in Staffordshire, became the leading (but not the only) manufacturer of multicoloured transfer printed pot lids and a huge range of related wares. Long admired for ...

That, at least, was the theory. In fact, relatively little Irish ‘provincial’ silver made the journey to the metropolis to receive official approval – for reasons of security and economy. It is a ...