You are not going to BELIEVE what I found in an antique shop today.

I was walking by when I saw what I took to be a box of tintypes in the window. I dived inside (because I know how to party), but I was wrong – it wasn’t tintypes at all. This was a box of mid-century copper etchings from the Fitzwilliam Museum. Copies of artworks in their collection for the purpose of printing catalogues. Everything’s done digitally now, so there’s no use for the printing blocks, and a box of them came into the possession of a pair of retired teachers who are now selling them on.

And who was right at the front of the box, gazing up at me with his puppydog eyes, delicately etched in copper? The man, the myth, the legendary chaos merchant: my guy Dante Gabriel Rossetti. His 1855 self-portrait, the one he later gifted to Charles Howell for helping him retrieve his poems from his wife Lizzie Siddal’s grave.

I said some very rude words out loud. And immediately bought him.

I’m bouncing off the walls. The fact that I’ve held the catalogues printed with this actual block and now it’s displayed on my mantlepiece is wild to me. When the light hits the copper at the right angle, it flares up beautifully. Dear old DGR!