Fred and Maureen Wilkinson

Fred Wilkinson and his late wife Maureen travelled the world professionally sourcing ethnic and tribal art and crafts for their own art galleries. museums, and private collectors, for almost 30 years prior to retirement. During their numerous buying trips they always strived to keep some of the very best finds for their own enjoyment, and over the years they amassed a significant private collection of antique singing bowls and other sacred, ceremonial and ritual artifacts.

In 2010 they sold their business interests and huge barn conversion home, and retired to a smaller cliff-top property overlooking the ocean in a remote part of Cornwall, England. They no longer had room to display everything and decided to downsize their incredible collection, including the antique singing bowls offered for sale on this website. Some of their ethnic and tribal collection is also for sale here.

Sadly, Maureen passed away in 2015 following a series of devastating strokes and cancer, and Fred has set up a small Nepal-based independent charity, One Golden Angel, in her memory. Now aged 80 he visits Nepal 2 or 3 times annually to administer his various humanitarian projects, and to source more exquisite antique singing bowls to add to his collection, the sale of which now funds his memorial charity’s humanitarian work in Nepal. Details of Fred’s charity projects can be seen on his Facebook page here, but please remember to return to the website.

A Brief Shared Biography: Fred and Maureen Wilkinson met on their first day at Goldsmith’s College of Art, London. It was love at first sight! After graduating with degrees in Fine Art in the mid 1960s they exhibited their paintings in solo and group shows in the UK and Europe, and taught life drawing and painting. They later qualified as teachers and entered primary education as art specialists. In 1971 Fred became a full-time lecturer in Art and Art Education at Froebel Institute (now Roehampton University), where he taught post-graduate students and continued his empirical research into child art and the relationship between language and action in the creative process. Meanwhile, Maureen pursued a successful and challenging career in special education teaching maladjusted adolescents in care, and children with dyslexia and learning disabilities in the primary sector.

In 1981 they felt the need for a better quality of life and moved to a small farm in Cornwall with their three children. Virtually overnight they became farmers…growing fruit and vegetables, hand-milking two house-cows and rearing pigs, poultry, sheep and cattle in an attempt to become self-sufficient. It was here, whilst farming, that Fred took up photography and Maureen began writing…later winning several major literary awards for her poetry, and publishing anthologies of her work.

In the mid 1980s the Wilkinsons embarked on a period of world travel, their trips embracing Peru, Bolivia , Brazil, Nepal, India, China and Thailand, but particularly focusing on Indonesia (Java, Bali, Lombok, Sumba, Sumatra and Sulawesi) and the Far East. They eventually made more than 40 trips to the Indonesian island of Bali to study its art and culture. It was during this period that they began collecting antique singing bowls and ethnic and tribal art.

In 1988 they opened Cornwall’s renowned Morning Price Gallery, in Falmouth, specializing in ethnic and tribal Art & Crafts from around the world. The Wilkinsons were early pioneers of fair trade. They personally purchased and commissioned their stock directly from artists and craftsmen at source in the country of origin, and for over 20 years provided well-paid regular employment for about 200 craft families in some of the poorer regions of the world. In the early 90s they opened a second Morning Price Gallery in Falmouth and another in Penzance, followed by the Kura-Kura Gallery in Penryn. They also initiated a unique informal franchise enabling numerous independent small businesses to successfully get off the ground with customized start-up packs that replicated the ‘look and feel’ of their own business in a variety of trading formats. Their galleries remained open until 2004 when they switched the business emphasis from retail to web-based wholesale. Trading as World Art & Crafts the Company supplied fair trade decorative and ethnic handicrafts to major visitor attractions such as the Eden Project and to hundreds of retail outlets throughout the UK and Europe. They sold the business in 2010 and retired to a remote part of Cornwall in Southwest England.