River landscapes with sailing boats, castles and cliffs, printed in grey-blue on creamy earthenware: the “Bristol Scenes” series brings English country style to your table. My shop currently holds a whole collection of it, from soup plates to a salt shaker. Some of the plates come in such numbers that you can lay a complete table with them.
What it says underneath
Every piece carries the mark “Bristol Scenes – Reproduction by The Bristol Pottery, England, Founded 1652”, with the name of its view below. The views go back to a series the Bristol Pottery printed from 1816, then under the name Pountney & Allies: scenes from Bristol and its surroundings such as St Vincent’s Rocks, Cook’s Folly or Hotwell House. “Reproduction” means these are later editions, not pieces from the early 19th century. That is what the mark says, and that is how I describe them. The advantage: you can use them instead of just keeping them in a cabinet.
A travel alarm clock is a clock, an alarm and a protective case in one. Folded shut, it fits into any suitcase; opened, it stands on the bedside table. There are currently several of these little clocks in my shop, by Kienzle and Europa, in red, green, brown and black cases. I’ll use them to show how they are built and what matters with an old travel alarm clock.
The principle: a clock in a folding case
In all the clocks here, the movement sits in a case with a lid. Closed, it protects the glass and hands; opened, the lid becomes a stand. The Kienzle clock’s case is covered in red on the outside and lined with red fabric inside; on the clock without a maker’s name, the brown covering is embossed with a crocodile pattern.
Not every copy is a fake. A replica, a souvenir in the style of a famous original or a decoration after a well-known pattern are perfectly fine, as long as they are sold as what they are. A piece only becomes a fake when someone claims it is the original.
How to tell the difference is something I’d like to show with pieces from my shop that I deliberately described as “in the style of”, “Delft style” or “replica”.
The short answer: an antique is more than 100 years old, a vintage piece at least 20 years. The long answer is sitting on my shelves. In my shop, books from 1897 stand next to books from 1975, and they show nicely where the line falls and why it moves a little further every year.
Antique: more than 100 years
There is no universally binding definition, but the 100-year threshold has become the standard. Customs tariffs, too, only count objects as antiques once they are more than 100 years old. For 2026 that means: anything made before 1926 may be called an antique.
The pieces in my shop come from house clearances, from markets and from exchanges with collectors. Each of these routes works differently. Here I’ll show you where you can find vintage items yourself, what to look out for, and what happens behind the scenes before a find goes online.
House clearances: a lot at once
A house clearance often brings a whole collection together at once. At the moment I am selling pieces from a house clearance on commission: 151 objects, mainly rustic pottery, faience, porcelain and household items. They include jugs, pitchers and bottles, pots and storage jars, bowls, and baking and cooking moulds.
With every new find, the first thing I do is the same: I turn it over. The underside often reveals more than the front, namely who made a piece, roughly when, and whether by hand. Whether something is valuable is never decided by a single feature. But there are clues I look for on every piece. Here they are, with examples from my shop.
1. The mark: who made it?
A maker’s mark makes a piece verifiable. Inside this porcelain bell with a view of Munich, the green mark gives everything you would want to know: the maker Kleiber, the town of Regnitzlosau in Upper Franconia, and the note “Handarbeit 22 Karat Goldauflage” (handmade, 22-carat gold decoration).
