(I knew Neil well and we agreed a fee) to provide me with catalogue style descriptions of each Japanese piece and he also kindly wrote an introduction for the Japanese part of the collection too.

Once completed he told me that if we were to let him sell our antiques at Sothebys, he would not charge us!

Having obtained everything from Neil I then asked Bob Hall to do the same for the Chinese collection and he did so and wrote an introduction for the Chinese part, without any charge. Lastly, I asked other dealers we knew if they would like to participate by writing about our collection and I ended up with some nice articles all provided free of charge.

My Father had published his collection of Netsuke & Inro in book form and it was expensive in those days to publish in colour. So, I knew my publication in a CD-ROM form would cost a lot less. My motivation was that if ever we wanted to sell any of our collections, I knew that any published items in auctions, always sold for far more than had they not been published.

I am now so glad I did go ahead, because now provenance has become so important. 'The Cohen Collection' CD did not sell very well, but at least I did do more than recover all the costs involved. jncohen.net/Cohen-Collection


Building and Designing a Website

I got to know a website design team within the 'Custard Factory' this was a new development in Digbeth that quickly became a centre for creative and digital designers. So, for a set fee they made my first website, and I was able to control the look of it.

The trouble was that it was listed under 'The Custard Factory' name. I did not know enough about it all at that time, so when they disappeared so did my website!

I really needed to have an Internet presence for my studio and so I set about building my own website.