NAVIGATION

By the 19th century British connoisseurs had assembled the richest collections of classical antiquities outside Rome. The Grand Tour acquisitions of the 18th century led to a fashion for ‘after the antique’. European craftsmen and their workshops were kept busy supplying the new demand for sculpture and objects modelled on known antiquities. Larva, shell, glass and agate cameo’s, and plaques such as those produced by Wedgwood in his blue and white jasper ware, were hugely popular and could be afforded and collected by the many who could not buy marbles and bronzes.