Porcelain Collections

"I am just speechless! ... I had her set up and she looked as though she was going to throw her head back and start talking and walking! She is utterly fabulous and I am crazy about her!" AB, USA

Elizabeth I - Ditchley portrait

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Taken from the 'Ditchley Portrait', a painting of Elizabeth I (1533-1603) by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, produced for Sir Henry Lee who had been the Queen's Champion from 1559-1590. The elaborate embroidery has been hand-crafted to scale along with jewellery and accessories. Underclothes have been created by reference to period designs and materials. The painting probably commemorates an elaborate symbolic entertainment which Lee organised for the Queen in September 1592, and which may have been held in the grounds of Lee's house at Ditchley, near Oxford, or at the nearby palace at Woodstock. After his retirement in 1590, Lee lived at Ditchley with his mistress Anne Vavasour. The entertainment marked the Queen's forgiveness of Lee for becoming a 'stranger lady's thrall'.

Elizabeth I - Hardwick portrait

US$6.000 including shipping, handling & insurance
Taken from the portrait by Nicholas Hilliard, circa 1592. This remarkable portrait of Elizabeth I (1533–1603) wearing a dress decorated with land and sea creatures appears to have been acquired by Elizabeth Talbot (‘Bess of Hardwick’), Countess of Shrewsbury and was almost certainly on display at Hardwick Hall in the Queen’s lifetime.

It concurs with others painted after 1588, in which the Queen is characterised by a rigid and hieratic expression and depicted almost as an impersonal image. It is thought that it was Bess herself who masterminded the design of the embroidery on the Queen’s dress, and possibly worked on it herself, intending it to be a spectacular New Year’s Day gift to the Queen. It is typical of the extravagant and sometimes bizarre late-Elizabethan style of embroidery which mixed together all manner of motifs taken from the natural world. A variety of flowers, including roses, irises and pansies, are interspersed with a lively depiction of insects, animals and fish.
This shows Elizabeth with Mary, Queen of Scots in the background. Taken at the National Museum of Scotland's exhibition in 2013 at which six of Lady of Finavon's dolls were displayed.
"Words cannot explain how beautiful Anne looks in person. The work in her is just amazing!" DG & KG, USA

Anne Boleyn

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Anne Boleyn (c. 1501 – 19 May 1536) was Queen of England from 1533 to 1536 as the second wife of King Henry VIII. Anne was the daughter of Thomas Boleyn, 1st Earl of Wiltshire, and his wife, Lady Elizabeth Howard. After Henry VIII had his marriage to Catherine of Aragaon declared invalid, he married Anne secretly on 14 November 1532. On 23 May 1533, the newly appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer declared Henry and Catherine's marriage null and void; five days later, he declared Henry and Anne's marriage valid. On 7 September, she gave birth to the future Queen Elizabeth I and subsequently had three miscarriages. By March 1536 Henry was courting Jane Seymour. In order to marry Seymour, Henry had to find reasons to end the marriage to Anne.
Henry VIII had Anne investigated for high treason in April 1536. She was convicted on 15 May and beheaded four days later. Modern historians view the charges against her, which included incest, and plotting to kill the king, as unconvincing.

Mary, Queen of Scots

US$4,165 + including shipping, handling & insurance
Mary, Queen of Scots (8 December 1542 – 8 February 1587) spent most of her childhood in France while Scotland was ruled by regents and in 1558, she married the Dauphin of France, Francis. He died in 1560 and she returned to Scotland. Four years later she married her half-cousin, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. In June 1566 they had a son, James. After Darnley's murder in 1567, she married James Hepburn, 4th Earl of Bothwell, who was implicated in Darnley's death which caused the nobles to rise against them. Mary was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle and forced to abdicate in favour of her one-year-old son, James VI of Scotland and later James I of England. After an unsuccessful attempt to regain the throne, she fled to England. With a stronger claim to the English throne than Elizabeth, Mary was instead imprisoned and after eighteen years in harsh captivity, was beheaded on trumped up charges at Fotheringhay Castle.

Henry VIII

US$8,000 + including shipping, handling & insurance
Henry VIII (28 June 1491 – 28 January 1547) was King of England from 1509 until his death in 1547. He is best known for his six marriages. Seeking a male heir, he broke with the Catholic faith and appointed himself Supreme Head of the Church of England in order to divorce Catharine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. He went on to dissolve convents and monasteries, for which he was excommunicated, to seize their income for himself.
He has been described as "one of the most charismatic rulers to sit on the English throne" and his reign has been described as the "most important" in English history but as he aged, he became severely overweight, his health suffered and he became feared as a lustful, egotistical, paranoid and tyrannical monarch. (Note: this doll is the original exhibited at the National Museum of Scotland)

Elizabeth I - Armada portrait

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The Armada Portrait of Elizabeth I of England is an allegorical panel painting depicting the Tudor queen surrounded by symbols of imperial majesty against a backdrop representing the defeat of the Spanish Armada in 1588. The Lady of Finavon representation of this portrait includes scaled down embroidery, jewellery and accessories as well as period underclothing. Fully undressable, this is a realistic life-like creation of one of the Elizabethan era's classic portraits. A display of majesty in all it's glory and extravagance.
The Armada Portrait: by an unknown English artist (formerly attributed to George Gower) from 1588. Exhibited at Woburn Abbey

Queen Victoria

US$3,750 + including shipping, handling & insurance
Victoria (24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837. Her reign of 63 years and seven months was longer than that of any of her predecessors and was a period of industrial, cultural, political, scientific, and military change marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. Though a constitutional monarch, privately, Victoria attempted to influence government policy and ministerial appointments; publicly, she became a national icon who was identified with strict standards of personal morality.
Victoria married her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha in 1840. Their children married into royal and noble families across the continent, earning Victoria the sobriquet "the grandmother of Europe" and spreading haemophilia in European royalty. After Albert's death in 1861, Victoria plunged into deep mourning and avoided public appearances. She died on the Isle of Wight in 1901.

Queen Alexandra

US$4,165 + including shipping, handling & insurance
Alexandra of Denmark (1 December 1844 – 20 November 1925) was the wife of King Edward VII.
Alexandra's family had been relatively obscure until 1852, when her father, Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, was chosen with the consent of the major European powers to succeed his distant cousin, Frederick VII as king of Denmark. At the age of sixteen, she was chosen as the future wife of Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, the heir apparent of Queen Victoria. They married eighteen months later in 1863, the same year her father became king of Denmark as Christian IX and her brother was appointed king of Greece as George I. She became generally popular; her style of dress and bearing being copied by fashion-conscious women.
On the death of Queen Victoria in 1901, Albert Edward became king-emperor as Edward VII, with Alexandra as queen-empress. She held the status until Edward's death in 1910. She greatly distrusted her nephew Wilhelm II, German Emperor, and supported her son George V during the First World War, in which Britain and its allies fought Germany.

Marie Antoinette

US$4,165 including shipping, handling & insurance
Marie Antoinette (2 November 1755 – 16 October 1793) was the last queen of France before the French Revolution. She was born an archduchess of Austria and was the penultimate child and youngest daughter of Empress Maria Theresa and Emperor Francis I. She became dauphine of France in May 1770 at age 14 upon her marriage to Louis-Auguste, heir to the French throne. On 10 May 1774, her husband ascended the throne as Louis XVI and she became queen.
She became increasingly unpopular unfairly accused of being profligate, promiscuous and harboring sympathies for her native Austria—and her children of being illegitimate.
On 10 August 1792, the attack on the Tuileries forced the royal family to take refuge at the Assembly, and they were imprisoned in the Temple Prison. After the monarchy was abolished, Louis XVI was executed by guillotine on 21 January 1793. Marie Antoinette was then put on trial and convicted of high treason and executed, also by guillotine, on the Place de la Révolution.

Czarina Alexandra

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Alexandra Feodorovna (6 June 1872 – 17 July 1918) was Empress of Russia with Nicholas II—the last ruler of the Russian Empire—from their marriage on 26 November 1894 until his forced abdication on 15 March 1917. Originally Princess Alix of Hesse and by Rhine at birth, she was given the name and patronymic Alexandra Feodorovna when she converted and was received into the Russian Orthodox Church. She and her immediate family were all killed while in Bolshevik captivity in 1918, during the Russian Revolution. She was later canonized in 2000 in the Russian Orthodox Church as Saint Alexandra the Passion Bearer.
A favourite granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Alexandra was, like her grandmother, one of the most famous royal carriers of the haemophilia disease. Her reputation for encouraging her husband's resistance to the surrender of autocratic authority and her known faith in the Russian mystic Grigori Rasputin severely damaged her popularity and that of the Romanov monarchy in its final years.

Mme du Barry

US$4,165 including shipping, handling & insurance
Jeanne Bécu, (an illegitimate daughter of a seamstress) was a remarkably attractive woman who became Louis XV's last mistress. Because the king could not be seen to consort with a common woman she was married off to the Comte Guillaume du Barry to ‘legitimise the relationship’ and give her a title so that the king would not be seen to be associating with someone not of the nobility.
After an eventful life, on 8 December 1793, at the age of 50, she was guillotined on the Place de la Revolution (now Place de la Concorde). On the way to the guillotine, she collapsed in the tumbrel and cried "You are going to hurt me! Why?" Pleading for mercy she begged the watching crowd for help to no avail.
Her last words to the executioner are said to have been: “De grâce, monsieur le bourreau, encore un petit moment” (I beg you, Mr. Executioner, just a little more time).

Lady Jane, 1840s Fashion Doll

US$1,095 including shipping, handling and insurance
In the 18th and early 19th Century, fashion dolls were manufactured and used by seamstresses, miliners, tailors and fashion merchants, displayed in their shop windows and sent across borders to illustrate the latest fashion trends. With the increasing availability of fashion magazines, they fell out of use.

Lady Jane brings the fashion doll back to life - a doll dressed in 1840s style complete with removable clothes and with under-garments and accessories.

Lady Beatrice 1840s Fashion Doll

US$1,095 including shipping, handling and insurance
In the 18th and early 19th Century, fashion dolls were manufactured and used by seamstresses, miliners, tailors and fashion merchants, displayed in their shop windows and sent across borders to illustrate the latest fashion trends. With the increasing availability of fashion magazines, they fell out of use. Lady Beatrice brings the fashion doll back to life - a doll dressed in 1840s style complete with removable clothes and with under-garments and accessories.