{"id":5640,"date":"2022-03-29T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-03-28T22:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/homesantiques\/?post_type=purple_issue&p=5640"},"modified":"2022-05-06T15:10:00","modified_gmt":"2022-05-06T13:10:00","slug":"willa-latham","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/c01.purpledshub.com\/homesantiques\/2022\/03\/29\/willa-latham\/","title":{"rendered":"Willa Latham"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Across Continents<\/h4>\n\n

The search for beauty and joy is what drives many collectors, says Willa Latham<\/strong>, and the desire to spread happiness was the catalyst she needed to start dealing in British porcelain<\/em><\/p>\n\n

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The 18th-century export plates collected by Willa\u2019s American grandmother.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n
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People often ask me what I collect and, as a dealer, how I let go of the pieces I find. They\u2019re also curious about how a non-British woman got into British porcelain.<\/p>\n\n

I started collecting and dealing in porcelain because I was starved of beauty in a world that can easily seem ugly. Humans are capable of evil, but equally of turning the goodness of life into wonderful things. Someone needs to make beauty visible for everyone to see\u2026 This was the vision for my business.<\/p>\n\n

In terms of collecting, I had to make a pact with myself: as I live in a small London flat I can\u2019t hold on to much so, besides the odd Bow or Derby figure, I only collect Henry Daniel porcelain. This very sophisticated maker from the early 1800s left behind a small treasure trove of exceptionally beautiful porcelain, and I will write more about him some time later this year.<\/p>\n\n

But how do I let go of all the other things I find? I won\u2019t say I don\u2019t sometimes find it difficult (Oh! That Bow figure of Bellona made in 1755\u2026 I shall never forget it!) Found dirty and forgotten at auctions, in people\u2019s attics or with other dealers, there is no greater joy than to clean the pieces, research them, sometimes get them repaired and then offer them to good homes where they will be loved and appreciated again. Waking up to a client\u2019s WhatsApp photo of the item in its new home always makes my day. These things were made with so much care, and in today\u2019s throwaway world it means a lot to spend a small fortune on something that we really, truly love \u2013 and it really is, in my opinion, an act of love.<\/p>\n\n

My passion for porcelain all started with my American grandmother. When I was a little girl I spent a lot of time with her in her house in the very north of the Netherlands. It was filled to the brim with Chinese export porcelain; I remember the feeling of running my little finger over the surface of 18th-century blue and white plates. My grandmother had grown up in a good family in West Virginia and appreciated antiques; I drank my hot chocolate from a large Limoges chocolate cup that had belonged to my great-grandmother.<\/p>\n\n

My grandparents were stuck in the Netherlands during the war and they started collecting during the post-war chaos. Canadian and American soldiers stuck around for a while and many wrote home to their families to send boxes of clothes and chocolate. Some shipped things back home \u2013 pieces they\u2019d bought from the locals, including antiques \u2013 and my grandmother, being American, saw an opportunity. She stood to inherit the family\u2019s horse farm in West Virginia, but needed money to retire, and so she started an antiques business: buying pieces at auction and exporting them to the US, well into the 1950s.<\/span><\/p>\n\n