Add some glamour to your dressing table with vintage vanity items

Vintage vanity items such as mirror and brush sets, lipstick holders, compacts, perfume bottles or vanity cases are a simple and easy way to add some old-fashioned glamour to a modern day dressing table or bathroom. Here’s our quick guide to these beautiful collectibles.

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Well worth collecting: The Ridgway ‘Homemaker’ range

Who would have thought that one of today’s most sought-after ranges of tableware was once sold at Wollworth’s at two and a halfpence a piece. Designed in 1957 by Enid Seeney for the Ridgway Potteries (Stoke-on Trent), the ‘Homemaker’ range, decorated with black stylised images of household items, has now become one of the most collectible dinner sets. With its abstract black and white design so typical for the era, it’s also one of the most beautiful Fifties sets around.
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Collectable vintage ceramics

With the credit crunch still not over and banks not being the safest option to stash our cash – where do we invest our hard earned money to guarantee a return on investment these days? Well here’s an idea – collecting cool and decorative vintage ceramics could be the very answer!
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Planet Vintage Girl chats interiors

Meet Laura Gaither – better known as Planet Vintage Girl – an avid 20th Century furniture and object collector with her very own antiques store and online shop. With an incredible eye for vintage furniture and devout passion for salvage and restoration, Laura sees collecting as part of a wider environmental philosophy where collecting these items not only saves them from landfill sites, but preserves them for another generation to appreciate. Laura chats to QueensofVintage.com’s Tara Gardner.

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Dansette: bringing music to the masses

In the beginning, there was the gramophone. 78rpm records were the norm, poor in quality, and susceptible to damage. After World War Two, the climate was ripe for change. In 1948, the LP – a 12” vinyl record playing at 33.5 rpm – was invented in America. A year later, the 7” or 45 rpm single record was introduced. Nell Darby looks at how music was brought to the masses – and influenced a whole generation.
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Design pioneers: Piero Fornasetti

While the Modern movement was in its heyday defying decorative flourishes and celebrating functionality, one man went against the design tide to look to the past for inspiration and draw it into modernity. Revisiting his Italian heritage and sacking the classical vaults of the Ancient world, Piero Fornasetti would create his enigmatic designs through a skilled use of line and a love of monochrome.

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Design pioneers: A guide to 20th century furniture design

With the turn of the century, came a turn in the tide of design. As the 20th century emerged, furniture design no longer simply sought out the ornamental and the retrospective, but strived to innovate and pioneer the present and the future. The modern wave of design brought a surge of new materials and manufacturing methods, often considered shocking to its predecessors. And riding this creative wave were some original designers whose bold innovations made them household names. Ellen Godwin takes a look at some of the movers and shakers of 20th century design.

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Inject some glamour into tea time with a vintage tea set

There’s nothing quite like having the girls over for afternoon tea, but when all you’ve got on the mug-tree is a hotchpotch of hideously chipped and stained ex-Easter egg mugs, then tea time suddenly doesn’t feel like such a treat. Get glamour back on the menu at your tea parties with QueensOfVintage’s cream of the crop vintage tea-sets.

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Vintage home chic trends

The coordinated, minimalist look is so five years ago, 2009 is all about imperfection. Bold prints and eclectic mixes of materials, texture and colour, lashes of fuchsia pinks and satsuma oranges are welcomed. Lucy Bloomfield looks at current vintage home chic trends.
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Postcards from the past: A snapshot of time

Before the instant gratification of Facebook, mobile phones, e-mails and even before most people had a telephone hooked up in their homes there was the postcard. Not  just holiday souvenirs, in the first half of the 20th century this classy method of communication was the best way to keep in touch with the day-to-day goings-on of loved ones and to decorate your walls with pretty pictures at the same time. Katerina Vasiliou shares some beautiful Edwardian postcards sent to her great grandmother, exclusively with QueensOfVintage.com Read more

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