Tunbridge Ware trinkets, toys and showpieces were the fridge magnets of their time; now they are the ultimate collectibles. When in the 18th and 19th centuries the aristocracy and middle classes travelled to Royal Tunbridge Wells for its curative waters, traders in West Kent saw an opportunity. The visitors needed souvenirs or gifts and with the forests of the Weald providing plentiful raw materials, turners and craftsmen started creating wooden objects decorated with veneered inlaid marquetry and intricate mosaics.

Toyshops, print galleries and stationers began selling a variety of Tunbridge Ware items: cribbage boards, paperweights, yo-yos, glove boxes, playing-card and postage-stamp containers, jewellery cabinets and thimble cases. It was a world in which men presented calling cards and women of every rank possessed sewing skills.

A few families dominated. James Burrows is credited with inventing the key tesserae technique with rods and slivers of wood glued and bound together, then cut into slices of pictorial veneer with a fine saw and attached to such objects as glove boxes or pin cushion holders. Henry Hollamby started as Burrows’s apprentice, while Edmund Nye took over from the Fenner family, with his designer Thomas Barton succeeding him.

Robert Russell, with a workforce of just six in 1871, including his sister Harriet, developed a particular style. All worked in different woods in their natural colours: yew, cherry, ebony, holly, walnut, rosewood, even a green oak derived from the action of fungus on dead trees. Topographical prints gave way to geometrical designs and ingenious mosaic bloc pictures of butterflies and birds. The scale increased too. Nye showed four items at the 1851 Great Exhibition, including a workbox table with a mosaic ship in full sail claimed to incorporate 110,800 separate pieces of wood.

Sadly, by 1900 demand for Tunbridge Ware had declined as the development of the railways saw spa-seekers head for coastal towns or the Continent. After Thomas Barton died in 1903, the only surviving firm in Tunbridge Wells or Tonbridge was that of Boyce, Brown and Kemp, which finally closed its doors in 1927. There is thus a finite amount of the ware remaining in the world and the best examples can sell for four figures. By concentrating on the huge range of smaller articles, you can however still put together a decent Tunbridge Ware collection, every one a thing of beauty. Just keep an eye out at jumble sales and charity shops.

When we began, I never imagined the pleasure to be gained from the glimpses of Victorian life acquired from our first calling–card box and sealing-wax barrel, pocket-watch stand and taper-holder. As we continued, there was too the occasional joy of finding an item with the original maker’s label from Thomas Barton or Edmund Nye still affixed. One day soon, downsizing will mean most will have to go. But we will keep one or two, for the simple pleasure of handling wooden objects on which so much labour-intensive skill was expended.