Vintage View: Let's take a look at Whitefriars Glass 

AJ Powell & Sons, later Whitefriars, was founded just outside the accepted City of London in the medieval area of Whitefriars

Volcano vases with a lovely warty finish, from €120, Etsy and eBay.

Accessible, beautiful and relatively plentiful, Whitefriars pieces have an assuring art glass look, and were snapped up by the 1960s generation exhausted by the post-war drudgery of safe front-room decorating.

Fringed lampshades, blunted art deco and cloying Victoriana regarded as classic and classy were starting to bore the bright younger things. With Britain turning away from Europe politically right now, it’s interesting to consider how close the art, crafts and design community remain across the continent — exchanging emerging ideas and exciting new techniques that still leap over national boundaries.