You are undertaking a practice-based dissertation in partnership with the V&A. How has this complemented your academic work?

Working directly with the V&A has been an extraordinary opportunity and, for me, a pivotal milestone both academically and professionally.

Having spent nearly five years working across the museum sector in London, at institutions like The British Museum and Royal Museums Greenwich, the V&A was the flagship institution where I was particularly eager to gain hands-on experience.

It was a cherry on top!

Being able to undertake my MA in Historic Art and Design dissertation in partnership with the V&A has allowed me to bring together my academic research with the professional environment I have been working toward for several years.

It has also been particularly meaningful because of my long-standing passion for eighteenth-century French decorative arts.

I am immensely grateful to my personal tutor, Barbara Lasic, who not only supported me in securing this opportunity but, more importantly, has consistently believed in my academic interests and encouraged my passion for the subject, even when it was expressed through the smallest research ideas or projects. Her support has been incredibly important throughout my studies.

What I find especially remarkable about the opportunity offered by Sotheby’s Institute of Art is the extent to which the dissertation can genuinely become a practice-based experience and a huge networking gain.

From an academic perspective, this placement has completely transformed the way I approach my research and perception of historical objects. Instead of analyzing purely through literature, catalogs, or secondary images, I am now able to engage in first-hand object assessment and work directly with historical registries and collection archives.

I can now handle real pieces myself! Also, seeing where nineteenth-century curators made a mistake in researching or cataloging and being able to correct that is truly amazing!

This has given me a much deeper understanding of the objects themselves, their material qualities, weight, tiny details, initials of makers, marks, condition, construction, provenance, and institutional context, which sometimes cannot be fully captured through photographs or written sources alone.

I must admit that it is considerably more challenging than the typical cataloging and research exercises we undertake in class. It requires a much greater level of attention, accuracy, and responsibility, particularly when working directly with museum collections, historical records, and curators.

However, this is precisely what makes the experience so valuable. It brings a level of physical, material, and institutional context to my academic research that purely theoretical class study simply cannot provide.

What is the central focus of your dissertation, and why do you think this area of research is particularly relevant today?

I love to sum up my research with the subtitle of my dissertation: “Vive la faïence!” I think it captures the essence of my work completely. My central focus is French faïence, primarily from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, though I am also cataloging a rare sixteenth-century object as part of my project at the V&A.

In my view, anyone studying decorative arts or ceramics, especially prestigious porcelain like Sèvres, Vincennes, or Meissen, needs a foundational understanding of faïence. European faïence, to me, is some sort of mother of later European porcelain. It holds immense historical relevance today, particularly when looking at the history of collecting in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Britain.

The hundreds of archival acquisition records at the V&A from that era clearly show how pivotal old faïence was in shaping public taste and institutional collections, making it a crucial yet often overlooked topic in decorative arts history.

Please go to the V&A or the Louvre; these museums have their own galleries and displays dedicated just to faïence from that era. Unlike prestigious decorative porcelain, faïence is for everyone, from the king and the banker to the fruit seller and the farmer. That’s the best part!

Have there been any specific collections, objects, archives, or conversations at the V&A that have influenced your work?

Absolutely! One of my favorites, and a piece that has completely influenced my dissertation, is a monumental 54 cm French faïence dish dating from around 1660-1680 and depicting the Rape of Europa. It occupies a prominent position in the faïence display case in the V&A’s Ceramics Galleries, and for me, it is the ultimate embodiment of the Grand Siècle and the court style under Louis XIV, the Sun King. I love him!

What fascinates me most is how this single piece brings together print culture, court taste, and institutional history. Its decoration is directly copied from an engraving by Michel Dorigny after Simon Vouet, featuring a quintessential seventeenth-century French Baroque composition. I also discovered that the dish was acquired in 1870 for £2,000, an astonishing sum at the time.

The Victorian curators described it as being “of the highest quality possible” and noted that “only three such plates were known, with its direct sister piece being held at the Louvre.”

I actually verified this myself…by going to the Louvre.

A slightly smaller 47 cm dish, from the same manufactory and dating to the same period, is displayed in Room 605 of the Louvre’s ceramics galleries. It is remarkably similar to the V&A example, almost identical in terms of composition, colors, and subject matter.

I am absolutely thrilled and deeply honored that my dissertation allows me to work so closely with such an exceptional object, one whose significance is further underscored by the fact that the Louvre itself displays a closely related example at the heart of its French faïence collection.

What has surprised you most about undertaking research within a museum environment compared with a more traditional academic setting?

What surprised me most is how much research in a major museum relies on logistics, patience, and time management.

In a traditional library setting, you pull a book off the shelf and work at your own pace. In a world-class institution like the V&A, you are collaborating with a living, bustling ecosystem.

You have to plan well in advance, booking slots to view fragile objects, waiting for availability, sometimes for long weeks during the heatwave, and coordinating around the busy schedules of curators and specialists. Then, once you get access to the primary archives, documents, or specific important objects, you might spend hours personally sifting through hundreds of handwritten nineteenth-century letters and acquisition registries.

At the same time, the human element is incredible. Working alongside curators and experts with such deep, specialized knowledge means that certain facts or attribution questions can be verified on the spot during a conversation, saving you days or even weeks of secondary research. Navigating that balance has been a huge eye-opener for me.

Collaboration often plays an important role in practice-based projects. What have you learned from engaging with curators, researchers, or other specialists during your dissertation?

The most profound lesson I have learned is that no one is infallible and that art history is a constantly evolving discipline.

Reading nineteenth- and early twentieth-century curatorial notes and correspondence has shown me just how much attributions and interpretations can change over time. An object that an earlier curator may have been completely certain belonged to a particular period or context can later be reassessed by modern specialists and understood in an entirely different way. For example, going from 1770-1790 to 1810-1830!

It has taught me to approach historical records with both respect and a critical eye rather than simply accepting previous attributions as definitive. For me, this has been one of the most valuable academic lessons of the practice-based dissertation.

The experience has also completely opened my eyes to the importance of networking. I realized that museum curators do not work exclusively within the museum environment; they have an extraordinary network of independent specialists, auction-house experts, dealers, and scholars.

Through my practice-based dissertation, I even had the opportunity to meet, a few times, one of the world’s most renowned dealers specializing in eighteenth-century Sèvres porcelain, which was an incredibly valuable experience.

It made me realize just how connected the museum sector and the wider art market and art business really are. This has changed the way I see my own future in the field: I now understand that developing expertise in decorative arts is not only about academic study but also about building meaningful professional relationships wherever possible, even outside of my chosen field.

The MA in Historic Art and Design brings together a wide range of artworks, periods, and methodologies. Has this interdisciplinary approach influenced your thinking and research interests?

Choosing this MA was one of the best decisions I’ve made. Before enrolling, I did deep research on the professors and specialists teaching the course. I realized they were true figures in art history—active workers, highly respected, and genuinely passionate. I remember telling myself, “Yes, these are the mentors I need.”

What really surprised me about the interdisciplinary approach was how much it expanded my horizons. Before this program, I was very focused, almost closed off, on seventeenth and eighteenth-century interiors. I never expected that studying a broader range of periods would change how I view modern art.

Two years ago, I would have never imagined saying this, but I completely fell in love with works by artists like Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Kazimir Malevich! I hang them on my wall, among Sèvres and Riesener.

At the same time, this cross-disciplinary approach helped me refine my core focus within historic art. It allowed me to narrow my trajectory from general eighteenth-century interiors to my true specialization: late seventeenth and eighteenth-century European ceramics. This MA was crucial for sharpening my expertise, and it has clearly defined the direction for my future academic career at the PhD level.

What skills or perspectives have you gained from your MA that you think will stay with you throughout your career?

The amount of hands-on experience on this program has been completely extraordinary. We had extensive object-handling training, from examining antique silver, silver hallmarks, and weights dating back to the seventeenth century to technical conservation and authentication training for Old Master paintings and historic ceramics.

Some of my most unforgettable moments involved eighteenth-century French decorative arts: taking part in one-to-one sessions with Marie Antoinette’s desk, opening eighteenth-century French furniture at the Wallace Collection to inspect Boulle marquetry and genuine tortoiseshell alongside a senior conservator, and even having a private Sèvres handling session at Waddesdon Manor with the curator, where I had the privilege of holding a porcelain service that belonged to Marie Antoinette.

Through my practice-based dissertation, I also gained a crucial practical skill: understanding how to catalog an object for an auction house versus a major institution such as the V&A, because the approach, priorities, and level of detail can be vastly different.

The MA has also taught me to be adaptable. I have experienced objects from very different professional perspectives: as a researcher, a museum professional, a conservator, and through the perspective of the art market. Understanding that different institutions ask different questions of the same object is something I know will stay with me throughout my career.

Most importantly, I have already seen the professional impact of these skills, even before graduating. The combination of practical experience and direct exposure to major collections has given me a level of confidence that I did not have before the MA.

I have already been invited to some very exciting job interviews while still completing my degree, which I see as a real testament to how valuable this practical experience has been.