The Angela Kay Collection
Angela Kay grew up on the Fylde coast. She was educated in Scotland yet found the time to play cricket for Blackpool Ladies. She travelled to Europe at 17 and met her future husband on a train to Barcelona. In Europe she learned to cook, then went to work for Jean Conil, a French chef in London. As well as writing his books for him, she collaborated with Elizabeth David on French Provincial Cooking. She then went on to write four books of her own.
Angela was also Mrs Walford, married to Tom, an ardent collector of creamware, who became an authority on the subject, his own ceramic collection formed a single owner sale, sold through Bonhams’ New Bond Street salerooms in 2012.
From the early 1960s through to the current decade, the husband and wife team put together a unique collection, with which they stylishly furnished their substantial Georgian house in Highgate. A 1966 article in Homes and Gardens demonstrates how their tastes changed over the decades, ultimately settling broadly on English and Welsh vernacular furniture and works of art. Pieces were chosen for their form or content – for their beauty or for the story they could tell - folk art, the naïve and scarcity are to the fore.
They scoured the London antique markets and travelled across the UK, focusing on the Cotswolds, Herefordshire, Shropshire and Wales. They combed flea markets and antique fairs. Many of the pieces come with provenance spanning five decades of antique hunting, and feature Angela’s fine hand embroidery. It is the hope of Angela’s family that successful bidders will derive the same pleasure from these pieces that Angela and Tom did.
