King Tut, glass catalogues, “brown pottery” and a great deal of cycling.
I think this all began with Tutankhamun.
I was ten when we studied him at school, and I was completely captivated. It was not only the gold, the tomb or the extraordinary story of its discovery. It was the idea that an object could survive long after the person who owned it, carrying clues about another life and another time.
That fascination with history never really left me. I went on to study The Art Market, convinced that I would eventually become a dealer or an auctioneer. I also volunteered at several National Trust properties—Lacock Abbey, Prior Park, Petworth House and Uppark—where being surrounded by historic interiors and collections only deepened my interest in the stories objects can tell.
Life took me into teaching instead. I later completed a master’s degree in education and became a full-time teacher, but the instinct to look, question and research remained. In many ways, teaching and dealing are not quite as unrelated as they first appear. Both begin with curiosity; both involve noticing details; and both are much more interesting when you can share what you have discovered with somebody else.
Vintage Goes Forth
During Covid, I needed something beyond work: a space in which I could clear my head, follow my curiosity and become absorbed in something entirely different. That was when Vintage Goes Forth began.
In those early days, sourcing often meant finding something online and then cycling across the length and breadth of South London to collect it. Facebook Marketplace became both treasure map and endurance test. There was a great deal of graft, a considerable number of miles and, occasionally, the dawning realisation that an object looked rather smaller in the photograph than it felt strapped to a bicycle.
The bicycle that carried rather more South London finds than it was designed for.
I was still teaching full-time throughout the pandemic. Vintage Goes Forth was never an escape from hard work, exactly—it simply provided a different sort of work. Researching, photographing and selling gave me a head-clearing space that I had not realised I needed.
The objects themselves became my education.
The glass rabbit hole
At first, I collected a great deal of glass. Then I became slightly obsessed with identifying it.
I spent hours using the 20th Century Glass encyclopaedia, poring over old catalogues and trying to locate the precise page on which a shape or pattern appeared. I wanted to know who had made each piece, when it had been produced and where it belonged.
A selection from my early glass-collecting years—and the beginning of a very deep rabbit hole.
Then came the test: going back out into the world and attempting to recognise things in the wild. Was a piece Italian, German, Scandinavian, British or Bohemian? Was the colour, weight, rim or base telling me something useful—or was I simply seeing what I hoped to see?
That was when buying became more than finding something attractive. I was learning to look.
The pot that wasn’t Wedgwood
The next rabbit hole began with an object accompanied by a certification letter. The letter did not tell me what the piece was; it chiefly explained that it was not Wedgwood.
Naturally, I became determined to find out what it actually was.
It proved to be by Charles Meigh, but the search sent me deep into the world of Wedgwood: what was popular, what had fallen out of fashion, what commanded serious prices and what might be worth rescuing when I encountered it.
The Charles Meigh ewer that sent me down the Wedgwood rabbit hole.
From Wedgwood I moved outwards into the great Staffordshire names—Sylvac, Arthur Wood, Burleigh Ware and many others. I became fascinated by the distinctive, often Art Deco-influenced pottery produced in and around the Potteries during the early part of the twentieth century.
Many pieces shared a family resemblance in their shapes, decoration and paintwork. I used to imagine the designers and decorators finishing a day at their respective factories, meeting in a local pub and casually exchanging ideas over a pint. That may not be the most academically rigorous theory I have ever formed, but it pleased me.
For a while, I bought these wares whenever I found them. Eventually I began to see so much on the market that I pulled back. There appears to be rather less of it around now; perhaps much of it found new homes during the great vintage-buying years of roughly 2015 to 2020.
There are still exceptions. I remain unable to leave good Dartmouth pottery behind, and Wedgwood’s Moonstone range continues to undo any resolve I may have had. My copy of Virginia Brisco’s Dartmouth Pottery is used so frequently that it barely has time to return to the shelf.
Wedgwood, meanwhile, requires an article—or possibly an entire wing of the website—of its own.
In defence of “brown pottery”
My interest in factory-produced ceramics gradually led me towards studio pottery. The earlier pieces I had been buying were largely mould-made; now I found myself drawn to things that were hand-built or thrown, with the maker’s decisions visible in the form, clay and glaze.
My other half refers to much of this as “brown pottery”. This is not entirely inaccurate, but it does fail to capture the level of obsession involved.
A lava-glazed vase by Glit, Iceland—one of the pieces I kept!
I began buying almost everything I could get my hands on, then scouring the internet in search of a maker whose mark matched the mysterious stamp on the base. I made notes on familiar marks, recurring patterns, clays and glazes. The British & Irish Studio Pottery Marks database became invaluable, followed by its Facebook group whenever a piece defeated me completely.
Marks matter, of course, but they are only part of the evidence. Form, clay, glaze and the touch of the maker can be just as revealing. Slowly, repeated looking becomes recognition. You begin to pick things up because something about them feels familiar, even before you can explain why.
I have kept a great deal of the studio pottery I found. Occasionally, I do move a piece along. We now operate a “one in, one out” philosophy at home. I should clarify that it is not my philosophy.
From the handmade to the found
Studio pottery sharpened my interest in the handmade. I began looking for evidence of the person behind an object: an uneven line, a tool mark, a thumbprint, a repair or a solution invented by somebody working with the materials they had.
That interest has now led me towards folk art—the latest rabbit hole, and one into which I am falling quite happily.
Painted wooden Nandi bull figures from India—the beginning of another rabbit hole.
What connects all these phases is not a particular period, country or material. It is character. I am drawn to objects that make me stop, pick them up and ask a question. Sometimes the answer is found in a catalogue or a maker’s mark. Sometimes it remains uncertain. Either way, the looking is part of the pleasure.
Forth & Found
I continued selling online while teaching and completing my master’s degree. After moving from London to Hampshire, I opened a pitch at Bourne Mill Antiques Centre, where I have now been trading for three years. Having a physical space taught me still more: how objects speak to one another, how people respond to them and how a collection can feel coherent without everything being from the same era or made in the same place.
At my Bourne Mill pitch in Hampshire, where I have now been trading for three years.
Over time, Vintage Goes Forth began to feel as though it no longer quite contained what the business had become. Forth & Found is the next chapter: a more considered home for the vintage and antique pieces I choose, the research behind them and the stories gathered along the way.
The new online shop brings together years of looking, learning, buying, cycling, carrying, occasionally getting things wrong and trying again. The Journal will be a place to share more of that: mysterious marks, useful books, overlooked makers, favourite finds and honest confessions from behind the scenes of dealing.
And, as I was thinking about how to tell the story of where it all began, the first order arrived through the new Forth & Found website.
It felt like a rather good place to start.
— Lee Forth