The set boasts a funky geometric form and is made of bone china, with two of the four sides bearing a gold or platinum trim.

And when he writes of the "gulls gliding overhead, white as bone china, searching from their high silence for whatever they might be able to eat down there among the dunes and marshes, the black rooftops, the little lights tossing on the water as the tides move out or in," I am back on the boat from Boston, reliving my first visit, memory and myth resonant still.

According to experts, American-made pottery, such as goseville and Rookwood, early Homer Laughlin and Flow Blue china, cookie jars, English bone china and ceramics made in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia are hot items.