The house of Emma Hawkins as it appeared in Tatler, photographs by Simon Upton.
Emma Hawkins is the pre-eminent dealer of Victorian natural history, the Scottish representative for BADA, and a long time exhibitor at the June Olympia. She is also featured in the Caroline Clifton-Mogg book, A Passion For Collecting.
Hers is a mis en scene spanning the 19th Century; with fine furniture as a foil to the rare and the unusual of the natural world.
Unlike the late comers to the world of collecting natural history Ms Hawkins is concerned with authenticity and originality. For her it is a love, rather than a fashion.
A Victorian Blackcock mounted by Peter Spicer of Leamington English circa 1900
A rosewood Gueridon with Jurassic period marble top, with moulded edge and stepped frieze above a turned baluster column with stylised lotus circlet and four scrolled and channelled cabriole legs with spherical feet.
An unusual cave containing Seahorses and starfish in their mock natural habitat created by papier machie. (Seahorses live in deep waters, common on S.Coast of Biscay & Further south in the Mediterranean, but rare in Britain. They do, however breed in great numbers around the Channel Isles.) English circa 1890.
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Sunday, 17 February 2008
The Naturalist Collector
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2 comments:
Stunning! That's how I want my house to look. And don't beat all us late-comers up...we can't help it that in Europe almost every piece of taxidermy is original and amazing...we're stuck buying stuff over in the USA, biting our fingernails waiting to see if our purchases will make it through customs undetected! :)
Cupcake - you know what I mean - those who can not distinguish the superb from the less than mediocre, but believe it to be the same!?!
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