1895

It is a truth universally acknowledged that to make a house into a home it has to be filled with beautiful antiques

Jane lives in a Georgian townhouse in East London where every room has a working fireplace and all the ceilings are adorned with crown molding. She is close to the Regents Canal and the largest port in the world where goods from all over England and the globe pass through.

Brought up in Staffordshire in an area known as’ the Potteries’, famous for its ceramics, she moved to London when a spinster aunt left her a small inheritance. Her vision was to create a cozy home by filling it with beautiful things that reflect her taste for the charming, eccentric and the interesting. In the pursuit of beautiful objects she rummages through the London markets, roots around the auction houses and arcades of the towns and villages of England and hunts in the bazaars and flea markets of the continent.

And she has succeeded. Whenever she hosts a tea or dinner party guests are enchanted by her latest finds: her vast collection of Staffordshire ceramic dogs; her majolica tableware which she uses to serve her home cooked meals and cakes; her stoneware figures of people from England’s past; her revolving gallery of paintings

She does have a problem, though… Her home is full and she cannot and will not stop collecting. But she has found a solution…

Her dear friend who moved to New Hampshire as a child visits twice a year taking the six day passage on the Inman Line’s Blue Ribbon winning SS New York. She chooses some of the most beautiful things Jane can bear to part with and takes them back to America.  And so was born Friend of Jane…