Do You Believe?

Imagine a time when many people believed that fairies really existed. When Tinker Bell was dying in J.M. Barrie’s 1904 play Peter Pan, everybody in the audience had to save her by crying out, ‘I do believe in fairies!’ In his book Peter Pan in Kensington Gardens, J.M. Barrie claimed

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Who’s Who – Anne Orvieto

Anne Orvieto is one of the stars at our WMODA boutique and a regular volunteer at our glass workshops. In addition to all her beautiful glass plaques, we recently sold her masterpiece which was on display in the Hot Glass gallery following our Touch of Glass exhibition. Anne was first

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Send in the Clowns

A visit to the circus during the Holidays is not complete without the antics of the clown but they were around centuries before the big top was invented. The earliest English clowns were called fools, Jack Puddings or Merry Andrews as the term clown, meaning clumsy did not enter the

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Merlin’s Magic

Merlin’s Magic Merlin is working his magic in our new Fantastique exhibition. The Great Enchanter from the Arthurian Legend first cast a spell on our founder Arthur Wiener over 50 years ago. A Royal Doulton character jug of Merlin was the first piece he ever bought. The Wiener collection began

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Here Be Dragons

The new Fantastique exhibit has a ‘thunder’ of dragons on display to use the collective term. There are Eastern and Western dragons plus many other hybrid serpentine monsters from the mythologies of the world, including Wyverns and the mystical Ouroborous. Chinese Dragons The five-clawed Chinese dragon was a spiritual and

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Glazed Expressions

Among the most admired objects at WMODA are the two circular tables with tiled tops by the Moorcroft pottery. One is in the Arts & Crafts gallery and the other is the centerpiece of the Art of Tea exhibit. They are the perfect style for afternoon tea for two, Victorian

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An Elephant in the Room

Our latest Ardmore acquisition is a monumental urn, 31 inches tall, featuring elephants and rhinos, which is now on display in our Ardmore room. It’s hard to believe that these giants of the animal kingdom are being slaughtered in huge numbers for their ivory. The World Wildlife fund urges us

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Beauty Beyond Nature

Paul Stankard is recognized internationally for his reinvention of the traditional glass paperweight. A highly skilled scientific glassblower, Paul began to study his local flora in the 1960s and encased his detailed observations in glass with a flame worker’s torch. Nestling in clear glass globes and cubes are tiny glass

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A Spooky Story

For Halloween we are highlighting the spookiest pieces in the new Fantastique exhibition. The Spook figure was modeled by Harry Tittensor for Royal Doulton in 1916. Spook, derived from Dutch, is a synonym for a ghost or an apparition. The Wiener collection must be haunted as the Spook appears in

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Salt of the Earth

Elaine Cooper, who passed away this year, made many firm friends around the world as a passionate collector of Royal Doulton, particularly salts. She shared her enthusiasm for collecting on several Collectors Cruises and published a reference book on Doulton Open Salts in 2009. Elaine’s book on the subject features

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