62 
TO LOOK FOR CURIOS IN 
House & Garden 
WHERE 
LONDON 
Districts Off the Beaten Track Where Transportable 
Antiques May Be Found With Varying Degrees of Ease 
SIR JAMES YOXALL 
M ANY an American lover of the old 
and beautiful who goes to Europe 
seeks to enhance the pleasure of the 
trip by trying his hand at collector’s luck. 
But however skilled he may be in the search 
for the elusive curio in his own country, in 
Europe he is playing the game on a strange 
ground. Some guide-posts to the richest 
fields might therefore be of help. Perhaps 
as one who has traveled Europe for many 
years with an eye always open for the 
likely antique dealer, I can give a few 
directions in this article. 
But European countries, however small 
in comparison with America, still cover 
some area. It is necessary to concentrate. 
Suppose we begin in London. We will find 
it a good starting-point. 
Some twelve years ago, I remember, I 
went into shop after shop in the Calver- 
straat of Amsterdam, asking for old Wedg¬ 
wood portrait-medallions. One dealer, the 
wealthiest and most dignified of them all, 
said: “Go back to London, sir. Ten years 
ago I could have sold you a basketful of 
Wedgwood medallions. Now everything has 
been brought back to London.” And that is 
truer still since the War. But it did not 
mean impossible prices in London; going 
back there, I bought an old Wedgwood por¬ 
trait-medallion of George Washington, 
dark blue and white, in perfect condition, 
six inches by four and a half, for less than 
ten dollars. 
Moderately well-off persons of cultiva¬ 
tion can still purchase portable antiques in 
London for very reasonable prices if they 
know where to look. I stress the word 
“portable”. Antique furniture is not easy 
to ship across the Atlantic, and I am there¬ 
fore supposing a collector to be going in 
search of old English porcelain, pottery, 
glass or glass pictures, needlework pictures 
or samplers, paintings, drawings, ivories or 
snuff-boxes, enamels or placques, clocks, 
bronzes, brass, Sheffield-plate, or tea-cad- 
dies, workboxes, spoons, lace, fans, jewelry, 
lacquer and so forth—whatever is beautiful 
or quaint and old or rare—touched with the 
magic of the past. Where in London is he 
or she to look for them? Where are the 
happy hunting-grounds? 
M UCH of the pleasure of collecting 
lies in the finding—the finding by 
yourself—and that is what you can 
do if you go from street to street in certain 
parts of London, peering into shop and 
pawnshop windows, entering brokers’ prem¬ 
ises and looking into minor sale-rooms 
which, empty in the day-time, await the 
auction at night. Therefore, this article 
has nothing to say on the great displays 
by famous dealers, or the purchases pos¬ 
sible at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and other 
famous auction-rooms where price is of less 
importance than possession. We will ac¬ 
cordingly not hunt in the West End proper, 
but forage elsewhere, a map of London as 
our general guide. In a little while we 
shall get an eye for the likely shops in a 
street—it is something like birdnesting, 
there comes a flair —but the first thing to 
know is the likely regions and streets. 
Here is a list of regions therefore: Padding¬ 
ton, Westbourne Grove, Marylebone, Baker 
Street, Holborn, Brompton and Chelsea, 
Kensington, Fulham and Battersea, Pim¬ 
lico, Shepherd’s Bush and Hammersmith, 
Notting Hill, Bloomsbury—all within easy 
reach of the London hotels. 
T MATTERS little where we begin 
on that list, in which particular 
region, but American collectors in 
London may well prefer to explore the more 
central of those districts first. Holborn is 
central, and there is hardly a street which 
turns off Holborn, from the First Avenue 
Hotel to Kingsway, in which likely shops 
may not be found. Great Turnstile, for 
example, leading into Lincoln’s Inn Fields, 
and (from the other side of Holborn) Red 
Lion Street, into Theobald's Road, and the 
paved alleys near Red Lion Square. The 
kind of shop we are in search of seems to 
hide, in the quietest streets, or round cor¬ 
ners, but it is there, for the finding, and 
in it are the collectable things we are 
after. We shall look for them ourselves, 
when inside the shop even, for often the 
little dealer will tell you he has nothing of 
the kind on hand. Going westward, towards 
New Oxford Street, itself a notable place 
of quarry, there are several streets which 
run towards the British Museum, into Great 
Russell Street, highly suitable; and, on the 
opposite side of High Holborn, there are 
Broad Street and High Street, the nearer 
part of Shaftesbury Avenue, and St. Andrew 
Street (leading into St. Martin’s Lane), 
Endell Street, Long Acre, and King Street, 
Covent Garden. 
For another handy and fertile region, let 
us wander in and out of the streets which 
go off the Brompton Road, from the Tube 
Railway station of that name to South Ken¬ 
sington Museum (which is also called the 
Victoria and Albert Museum). There are 
at least fifty likely shops in this district, 
even before we turn into the Fulham Road, 
and then off on the left hand into the 
King’s Road, Chelsea, and so back on our 
tracks, parallel, to Sloane Square and the 
immediate neighbourhood, to the Under¬ 
ground Railway station of the same name. 
I know at least a dozen interesting places in 
the Fulham Road, and as many in the 
King’s Road, and some between the latter 
and Chelsea Embankment, and some across 
the bridge on the Battersea side of the river. 
Thus to hunt takes you into the old, un¬ 
cosmopolite London. Sam Weller’s knowl¬ 
edge of London was “extensive and pecu¬ 
liar”, and so does a wandering collector’s 
knowledge of it become. 
USTON Station is a well-known point 
of American arrival in London; sup¬ 
pose we make it a point of collector’s 
departure; from where Gower Street points 
the Euston Road, to go westward, crossing 
Tottenham Court Road, is to come to the 
Marylebone region; southward, to Oxford 
Street, in many by streets many shops of 
the kind we are in search of await the col¬ 
lector. Between the Edgware Road and 
Paddington Station runs Praed Street; at 
least twenty such shops are in it, and others 
are in the several streets which go off Praed 
Street itself. Further west, beginning near 
the outward end of Paddington Station, is 
Westbourne Grove, the centre of a collec¬ 
tor’s district; in the streets running up to 
Bayswater Road and Hyde Park you will 
find what you are in search of, and going 
further still that way you come to Notting 
Hill; whence, by Church Street, Kensing¬ 
ton, you enter into a region particularly 
rich in this matter. To take the Tube or 
Metropolitan line to Notting Hill is to 
emerge amidst a cluster of likely shops. 
I remember a trouvaille there. I wished 
to acquire that rarity, an eye-miniature, one 
of those rounds or ovals of ivory painted 
with the beloved’s eye and set in a serpent 
of gold with tail in mouth to signify an 
eternity of fidelity; the fashion that was set 
by George IV and Mrs. Fitzherbert a cen¬ 
tury and more ago. I took train to Notting 
Hill, walked a hundred yards, looked in a 
small clock-and-watchmaker’s window 
filled with modern things, but having one 
small show-case containing old jewelry, and 
there, sure enough, was an eye-miniature, 
the first of several I have bought, and the 
best. The cheapest also, for when I asked 
the price the reply was: “Would seventeen 
and sixpence”—four dollars and twenty 
cents—“be too much?” I have sometimes 
thought that I would like to conduct a few 
enthusiastic American collectors on a trip or 
two in London, for the pleasure of it; I 
have noticed the delight of some. 
ICTORIA Street and Vauxhall Bridge 
Road meet near Victoria Station; with¬ 
in the angle which they form lies a good 
hunting-ground: between Vauxhall Bridge 
Road and the Thames lies Pimlico, another 
district to our purpose. Or, if you take the 
Underground train to Hammersmith Broad¬ 
way, and then the thoroughfare of that 
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