Author: Rosalie Wise Sharp

Published: 2002

Publisher: Antiques Collectors’ Club

Pages: 288 pages

ISBN: ISBN-10: 1552634604 ISBN-13: 9781552634608

An affectionate journey into the 18th century world of Johnson and Boswell as the context for the Sharp collection. In this illustrated book, Rosalie Sharp looks at the society in which her collection of porcelain and pottery was produced in England in the 1700s. Her contemporary witnesses include the diarists Samuel Johnson and James Boswell, letter writers Horace Walpole and Mary Delany and a host of other raconteurs and travellers. These accounts, together with her own extensive reading, enabled her to write a lively story of the daily life of the period – from food, dress and sexual escapades, to country houses, grand tours, crime, religious and racial prejudice. It is a rich brew, peppered with cameo sketches of key personages of the time, from the royal family to street peddlers and villains. Set amid this text, the porcelain pieces and pottery figures illustrated here take on layers of meaning and exemplify a multitude of fascinating facts. In effect, a plate or a figurine can represent a thousand words, if only you have the key.