Why Didn't I Think of This Before? Identifying pottery at the V&A

Today I visited the ceramics department at the V&A for the very first time. I have no idea why I waited this long - probably because I never found the 6th floor... I usually head straight towards the jewellery, ironwork and medieval galleries.

Amazing, is all I can say. I was especially happy with the British pottery, and managed to date quite a few of my pottery shards, and see which kinds of pots they came from.

For an example - see the brown textured pottery shard on this brooch that I made:

Now look at this:

So my brooch has a shard from 1770-1780 - and it once could have been a coffee pot! That kind of thing amazes me! And that was just one of the many pieces I managed to identify and date.

You can have a look at the entire collection of photos I took at the V&A today in my Flickr set

And, I just discovered that you can search the entire V&A collection online!!!

Exhausted now...