Budleigh Past and Present

I call in from time to time at Katy Gooding’s vintage and collectables shop at 57 High Street in Budleigh Salterton. There’s a blurred line between some of its contents and some of the artefacts that make up Fairlynch Museum’s collection. In my quest for traces of Budleigh’s Anglo-Indian heritage which I mention h ere   I wondered whether I might find the odd pith helmet or stuffed tiger among Katy’s collectables, or even a Belinda Lee poster.   No such luck, but Katy did show me something equally rare and interesting for an admirer of William Morris designs.    Jeannie Foord was a Glaswegian painter of plants and flowers who in 1901 published a fine book intended for use by artists, designers, students and others. The Daily Telegraph noted, "Never before has the essential character of different plants received from the point...

“I’d have thought you’d have got past that stage!” was one of the quips that auctioneer Piers Motley-Nash had to put up with from onlookers this morning as he was posing with this porcelain beauty from Germany . As it happened he had a ready answer. “My sister’s due to give birth soon so no doubt I’ll be holding a real baby before too long.” This Schoenau Hoffmeister doll is almost a hundred years old, but she certainly doesn’t look her age. Described in the Bicton Street Auction Rooms catalogue as bisque headed and open-mouthed with composite jointed body, she has moving eyes, is 69cm tall and has an estimate of between £120 and £150 in the antiques sale which starts at 10.00 am on Monday 11 November.   Bisque dolls are characterised by their realistic, skin-like matt finish . Piers, who is Fairlynch Museum’s Antiquities Consultant, thinks that she was made between 1915 and 1920 and that she’s the most interesting of the eight dolls in the sale.    So ...