Ceramics

The two outstanding blue dash chargers offered at a recent sale held by Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood in Exeter form part of a small but distinctive group of early 18th century delft dishes boldly painted with a variety of quirky bird, animal and figure subjects.

This large Burmantofts faience plaque sold for £7000 at 1818 Auctions of Milnthorpe, Cumbria. The vendor, who bought it at a car boot sale for £20, was in the room to watch bidding surge way beyond a £400-600 estimate.

A 20-piece Nantgarw dessert service has sold for £20,000 at Campbells of Worthing. It was consigned on behalf of a titled lady.

Like many an antiques dealer, Mark Griffin of Arbatel Antiques lives something of a double life.

It has the highest-ever estimate placed on a work of art at auction. Predicted to fetch ‘in the region of $140m’, Christie’s are offering Pablo Picasso’s ‘Les femmes d’Alger (Version ‘O’)’ in New York on May 11.

Discovered in a pile of objects waiting to be tipped at a routine house clearance, a pair of large ceramic plaques will be offered at Gary Don in Leeds this week.

A Chelsea porcelain beaker with blue and white botanical decoration caused a sensation at Peter Wilson latest sale in Nantwich. Estimated at £100-200, it sold at £37,000.

Potteries Auctions in Staffordshire are offering this large William Moorcroft exhibition vase at their second auction in their new premises in Silverdale on April 25.

Delftware experts Aronson of Amsterdam have recently reunited this pair of c.1690 Delft ‘bouquetière’ figures depicting William and Mary.

The stock of the Austrian-born British studio potter Lucie Rie (1902-95) continues to rise in the saleroom.

A series of deals to safeguard the future of the Wedgwood Collection and ensure it will continue to be displayed in the Potteries have now been completed.

It has taken just over a month for the Art Fund’s £2.74m appeal to save the Wedgwood Collection to reach its target. It will now be gifted to the V&A but will stay in situ at the Wedgwood Museum in Barlaston, near Stoke.

Soon after ATG reported that the public had contributed £700,000 in a matter of days to help the final push to save the Wedgwood archive, the news came through that close to £2m had been raised. Some £1.3m was donated in just four days.

Highlights from the Coslov collection of English majolica will be on show in London next month prior to their sale at Freeman’s in Philadelphia on October 7.

There are signs that last year’s publication of ‘The Della Robbia Pottery’ by Peter Hyland has given a lift to the market for the distinctive wares produced in Birkenhead by Harold Rathbone and Conrad Dressler between 1894-1906.

A massive Coalport Feldspar porcelain jug painted with a study of Earl Spencer’s Durham Ox in a parkland setting has been bought by the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge.

Knocking others off their perch, Salisbury’s Woolley & Wallis improved upon their own auction record for Martin Brothers with the £75,000 sale of this bird jar to Gloucestershire British art pottery dealers AD Antiques.

The year 1737 was something of an annus horribilis for George II.

Coming to the Pembrokeshire Antiques Fair organised by Towy Fairs at Picton Castle, near Haverfordwest next weekend (June 7-8) are some 50 pieces of richly-glazed Ewenny pottery.

A trial model of a champion dog led the way among a group of Beswick figures sold at a recent auction in Stoke-on-Trent.