The Martin Brothers “When you enter the shop… you find yourself in a dim-lit passage with crowded shelves of stoneware jugs carved into leering, laughing, grinning and ogling heads, jostling with the most impossible, and most fascinating, pot birds with strangely anthropological expressions…” The ‘pot birds’ were also known as

On January 25, Scots around the world will honor Robert Burns, Scotland’s national poet (1759-1796). At a Burns supper, guests enjoy traditional Scottish fare washed down with whisky and recite his most famous poems, including his Address to a Haggis. The first Burns supper was held by his friends at

Devilishly Hot Doulton! One of the very first Doulton figures depicts Mephistopheles, a demon who corrupts men and collects the souls of the damned for Lucifer. Only one figure from 1897 is known in a vivid scarlet costume and it comes up for sale at Whitley’s Auctioneers on January 19.

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

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