When Millena and Tim Coffey go collecting, they’re not afraid to get down and dirty. Donning Wellington boots and rain gear, they head out with their flashlights before daybreak to scour obscure sales in England, France and the northeast United States. “Instead of hunting for ducks in the early morning, we’re going booth to booth, hunting for ceramics,” says Millena.

Ceramics are just one passion shared by this collecting couple, who travel extensively and have called the Middle East, Europe and various parts of the United States home. At present, home is a three-story stone farmhouse in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, built around 1926. Julia Child, the late cookbook writer, and her husband, Paul, held their wedding reception here in 1946, and the home displays a mural painted by Julia’s brother-in-law, Charles Child. “When we first visited the house in 1993 and saw this extraordinary mural and the house’s overall beauty we knew this is where we wanted to live,” Millena says.
 
The Child mural, which alludes to the exterior gardens, is a dramatic backdrop for the Coffeys’ collection of mainly British and American art and antiques. In the living room Millena showcases her 18th- and 19th-century English and American portraits; the collection includes several paintings by the leading 18th-century American portraitist Thomas Sully. “I particularly like portrait paintings, because they reveal a lot about a person,” says Millena, a former psychotherapist. Alongside the portraits she has hung paintings depicting local scenes, including some that contain streams or paths, which, says Millena, “seem to be taking one on an adventure—very much like the way we seek out treasures.” Noteworthy examples are a late 1920s painting by the Pennsylvania Impressionist Fern Coppege depicting her Lumberville home, and “Winter, Sugan Road in Solebury” by Laurence Campbell, a contemporary plein-air Bucks County Pennsylvania Impressionist painter; both scenes are near the Coffeys’ home. The couple have mixed these period paintings with charming 19th-century objets de vertu in ivory, wood, straw, scrimshaw, tortoiseshell and celluloid: snuffboxes, a folding ruler, a bulldog nutcracker, tiny globes and an hourglass. Period collectible objects such as these can be found throughout the Coffey house and tell us that these collectors have a penchant for the unusual and the whimsical. Tim’s collection of 19th-century Tartanware (tartan-clad objects consisting mostly of desk accessories and boxes) lends a Scottish ambience to the study. One special piece, Tim notes, is a Mary Queen of Scots Stuart tartan-bound book that he gave to Millena as a birthday present. Tim is attracted to Tartanware because of the painstaking workmanship involved and because of the objects’ historical interest.

The early porcelain pieces displayed throughout the house, such as the 18th- and 19th-century Blue and White Spode transferware (some of which were purchased at Sotheby’s London), nestled in a late 18th-century English mahogany corner cupboard in the library, are as functional as they are decorative. “I like these because of their color and crispness, and because my children used them for meals. We still use them for dining and entertaining,” Millena says. Many of the rarer early 19th-century pieces in the collection depict hunting scenes. Other uncommon pieces include a Spode “Blue Tower” pattern child’s miniature set and cheese cradle, both circa 1815, that the Coffeys discovered in England. In addition to the Spode collection, the library houses 18th-century Dutch Delftware garniture pieces, clearly deeper in color than the Spode and more heavily influenced by Orientalism, and beautifully sculpted basket-and-fruit-shaped Wedgwood creamware. Alongside the delightfully amusing 19th-century English Toby Jugs and 18th-century copperplate engravings by English engraver Robert Pranker in the entrance hall and the anteroom connected to the library is a striking assemblage of English and American 19th-century silhouettes. The Victorians were enamored with silhouettes of loved ones in profile or of children, one of their favorite subjects. Some of the rarer examples in the Coffey collection depict full figures engaged in some activity, such as a girl with hoop and stick, and a boy playing badminton.