Ceramics

FREQUENTLY, the most interesting object in someone’s garage is not the car.

FOR more than a decade, Dorset saleroom Cottees have held biannual sales dedicated to Poole pottery. The most latest event had the sad distinction of being the first since the closure of the Poole Pottery just before Christmas.

ROYAL Doulton Ltd are looking for a new owner for their Minton paper archive – the collection of thousands of original watercolours, drawings, pattern books and other manuscript material relating to designs for the Minton factory dating back to 1793.

PRESTIGE Ceramic Fairs have a new and attractive venue; in Kent at the 16th century Sutton Valence School which is set in 100 acres of grounds in the Weald of Kent, near Maidstone.

Among the many unique and important pieces of English pewter in the David Little Collection sold by Christie’s in King Street on May 1 was this mid 17th century broad-rimmed pewter charger.

Ealing Council’s Pitzhanger Manor-House has been forced to close its exhibition of Martin Brothers pottery following a burglary – the second to hit the collection in two years.

After a year-long fund-raising effort, The Ashmolean Museum in Oxford has just secured the future of its most impressive Chelsea porcelain exhibit.

The Birmingham industrialist and designer Matthew Boulton was the toast of the Paris salerooms last week when this impressive ormolu-mounted fluorspar vase was sold at Drouot Richelieu for €170,000 (£121,430) plus premium.

The majolica market may have cooled a little since the white hot days of the 1990s but rarities still have the capacity to command imposing sums at auction.

This enigmatic, 7in (18cm) high, early 18th century delftware plaque featured in Sotheby’s November 21 sale at Bond Street where it fetched a mid-estimate £26,000, selling to London dealer Jonathan Horne.

Aynsley China has a history stretching back to 1775 when John Aynsley first started producing ceramics in Longton, Staffordshire. Its enduring reputation is for its bone china tablewares decorated with floral sprays or fruit in the manner of Royal Worcester, or for its commemorative pieces. They remain very affordable and even Aynsley’s well-painted cabinet plates featuring British landmarks usually cost less than £100.

The highlight of the Lowestoft porcelain sale conducted by enthusiast Russell H. Sprake at The Beaconsfield Club, Lowestoft on the evening of October 27 was this rare blue and white birth tablet.

THIS year was the second successful three-day Ceramics Festival held at Stoke-on-Trent in October, which is maybe surprising for a place which owes its very existence to pottery and is regarded by many, most particularly Paul Atterbury, the festival patron, as “the ceramics centre of the Western world”.

“THE Shelley Group has only one public fair each year and this is its 20th staging since the group was organised back in 1986. This must be a pretty good record for a collectors’ group,” says the group’s Martin Kent.

The missing element in a rare series of vases by a celebrated Arts & Crafts designer has now been located for a Cheshire country house after it was spotted in an ATG advertisement.

Rare and significant works of art from the Old World will just occasionally surface, unrecorded, in the New.

Pottery specialist to leave landmark Kensington Church Street premises for Mount Street

AFfter three auctions and more than 1200 lots devoted to porcelain from one factory one might have thought there was a chance buyers would have tired of the Zorensky collection of Worcester porcelain. Not so.

Alongside the Americana offered in the New York salerooms earlier this month, there was a strong representation of early English ceramics. Sotheby’s January 20 sale of the pottery collection of Harriet Carlton Goldweitz was followed the next day by Christie’s auction of the Mrs J. Insley Blair collection, which included some key Staffordshire productions alongside its blue chip American furnishings.

A Susie Cooper vase sold for £3850 on eBay on January 13. The vase, which measures just over 12in (30cm) high, is decorated with a hunter in a loin cloth stalking two deer or ibex close to a stylised tree – an unrecorded design of around 1931 or ’32. Similar pieces are known from a publicity shot taken in the 1930s although most were thought to have been destroyed during a hit on the factory during the Blitz.