After the crazy carousel of Christmas and the New Year, January can be a bit quiet, so I decided to cheer myself up with a good dose of fine art. I settled on the Russell-Cotes Museum in Bournemouth. As I arrived at the eccentric building on the East Cliff, high above the beach, the sun broke through the mist so I was transported to a completely different Riviera. The interior is totally crammed with anything and everything that caught Merton and Annie Russell-Cotes’s eye as they travelled the length and breadth of the globe. On one occasion they returned with over 100 packing cases. Within the house they added a picture gallery for a huge number of Victorian and Pre-Raphaelite paintings. In addition there are collections of Chinese, Japanese and Islamic works of art (right up my street), tribal artefacts, stuffed birds, stained glass sky lights, embossed and lacquered walls, mementoes from Napoleon to Sir Henry Irving and the tea set used to entertain Princess Beatrice in 1919.
Wick Antiques was established by Charles Wallrock in the early 1980s. Having grown up in the Antiques world Charles developed an extensive wealth of knowledge.
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