Porcelain-painting during the French revolution

People don’t accumulate stuff any more. When the late Victorian houses on our street change hands their interiors are stripped of all decorative features and the walls painted white, unrelieved by pictures: if their Victorian owners returned as ghosts, they would go snow-blind. The Victorians’ passion for accumulating stuff was close to an addiction, and no one accumulated it like the Rothschilds. But the Rothschilds didn’t stop at objects; they also collected exotic animals, especially birds. All the Rothschild chateaux and mansions boasted aviaries – and Baron Ferdinand de Rothschild’s Waddesdon Manor was no exception. Six years after its completion in 1883, a rococo aviary manufactured in France was installed in the garden: a family photograph shows Ferdinand feeding a scarlet ibis, a boater on his head and a bird whistle between his lips.