"Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish on its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid..." Albert Einstein

Clarice Cliff Flora Wall Mask

But here's what got me started... here's what sucked me in, as a total novice, into the slightly obsessive, geeky world of antiques...

I thought I'd try a snap at ebay, being strapped for cash as ever, and thinking that even stupid people can make money selling stuff on ebay. I thought I'd try antiques - as I was totally ignorant about them of course - but I did know I liked art deco stuff. Clarice Cliff was an obvious place to start looking. I figured that I would be clever (ah, me...) and look for mis-spellings of the name, as it was obvious anything correctly spelled was getting picked up for outrageous sums by people with a lot more money than me (little did I know every serious treasure seeker uses the same technique). I found this slightly ugly mask, labelled as 'In the style of Claris Cliff' (sic), and although it was unsigned, from my researches I figured it was an actual Clarice Cliff, and not just 'in the style of'.... so I bid on it, and was the only one, buying it for £25.

It was confirmed by my local auction house as a genuine and original Clarice Cliff, and sold at auction there for £1025.  They featured a stunning photo of Flora (as she was called) on the front cover of their glossy auction catalogue. The bidding was electrifyingly exciting, with several phone bidders fighting it out.I was hooked. Sadly, of course, I have never had quite the same success since - but the hunt is the thing - one day....

A box of treasures from the auction...

So just for a dry run, let's start off with a wonderful auction find... part of a job lot at my regular house, in a box mixed in with a few other things that also turned out to be gems, an obviously ancient leather mug...

Turns out this ancient mug was over 400 years old... you can see extra wear in 2 bands around the rim and above the bottom part of the handle, which would undoubtedly have been the result of the mug being bound with silver, long since removed... and the clincher was that it is almost identical to a mug known to have been used by Oliver Cromwell.

This wasn't the only treasure in that auction box... a tupperware container bearing the printed label "Late Medieval stained glass" turned out to be no more than the truth - a wonderful deep red and yellow rondel of textured stained glass, suggested by Bonhams of Chester (with whom I checked) as likely to be medieval and date from the late 17th or early 18th century...

And one more sweet little gem... a little porcelain pot, moulded to depict a mandarin seated on an elephant. The mandarin was missing his head, which turned up in the bottom of the box, and allowed me to effect an almost invisible repair. The backstamp mark, although very faint, obviously belonged to Schafer & Vater, a German porcelain firm, and the lidded pot would date to the 1920s or 30s, a real art deco gem...

End result - from a box that cost me about £45, I made around £650 on ebay...

Oh dear lord - if only all finds were like this... I would be a wealthy woman.  And none the worse for that I suppose... but chance is a fine thing...

Newbie blogger alert....

Testing, testing...

OK - first thoughts - somewhere to catalogue all my wonderful antique finds... and to include sections on my other interests, which range from the global to the stupidly specific...