Ceramics

ON the evening of Tuesday, March 1 thieves broke into Willingham Auctions and stole four fruit-decorated Royal Worcester vases.

STOKE on Trent will shortly host the largest exhibition of Shelley and Wileman ceramics since the factory’s closure in 1966.

A PIECE from a celebrated but elusive porcelain service that turned up at the latest sale at Aguttes in Paris understandably caused great excitement.

ESTIMATED at $20,000-30,000, this Vezzi porcelain octagonal teapot and cover attracted great interest among European buyers at the latest sale held by Skinner in Boston.

MODELLED as a brickwork kiln, this rare stoneware lampbase was one of only four hand thrown by Guy Sydenham to commemorate the pottery’s centenary in 1973.

PICTURED here is one of more than 100 polychrome Delft tiles, valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds, stolen from a leading collector in the Netherlands.

WHEN auctioneer Mark Oliver climbed down off the rostrum after completing a 650-lot marathon double sale of British art and collectors’ pottery, Bonhams had netted just shy of £720,000.

THANKS to a clever bit of detective work by one of its curators, the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle has been able to reunite a porcelain cup and saucer that have separated for over 200 years.

THIS 8½in (21cm) English porcelain jug painted with a cavalryman on horseback probably dates from c.1817 when, following rioting in the spring, magistrates in Manchester decided to form the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry.

AN extraordinary legal loophole threatens to decimate the unique collection of the award-winning Wedgwood Museum in Stoke-on-Trent.

THE Lyon & Turnbull sale at Edinburgh got off to a splendid start when Lot 1, a Worcester porcelain plate from the Duke of Gloucester service, c.1770, sold at £12,000.

TO many people, Geoffrey Godden is indivisible from English porcelain. The scholar and author is a name on every ceramic enthusiast’s bookshelves through the many books on English ceramics written during the course of his 60 years of collecting and study.

CERAMICS dealer Jonathan Horne, former Chairman of the BADA and Past Master of the Guild of Arts Scholars, Dealers and Collectors, was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for services to English ceramics.

THE first slice of the Longridge collection of early British pottery and European vernacular works of art, formed over 30 years by American Syd Levethan, was sold in two sessions for £2.93m by Christie's in King Street on June 10-11.

NEW data released about thefts from large country houses highlights the targeting of valuable porcelain by criminal gangs over the last three years.

MORE than 130 pieces of Caughley blue and white porcelain from a Worcestershire collection sold for £56,000 when it returned to Shropshire for sale at Halls in Shrewsbury.

GORRINGES are to offer for sale paintings and works of art belonging to Grace Higgens, the former housekeeper at Charleston Farmhouse, the Bloomsbury Group's Sussex retreat.

OF all the many subjects painted by Harry Davis during his long tenure at the Royal Worcester factory, among the rarest and most desirable are polar bears in an Arctic landscape.

THE highlight of Dreweatts' January 13 furniture sale at Donnington Priory was a pair of monumental, late 19th century Italian, sculpted alabaster, twin-handled urns.

This graduated pair of Staffordshire shaped oval meat platters are printed in green with scenes from the rare and desirable ‘Arctic Scenery’ series.