Ceramics

KENSINGTON Church Street will be a worthwhile call for those interested in brushing up their ceramics scholarship over the next week or so, with two specialist dealers holding non-selling exhibitions aimed at furthering our knowledge.

CHARLES Baldwin’s stock-in-trade as a porcelain artist was swans in flight, but the celebrated Royal Worcester painter did occasionally apply his meticulous technique to other subjects including mammals and other birds. The sale held by Philip Laney (10% buyer’s premium) at the Malvern Auction Centre on April 6 included the impressive vase, top right, decorated by Baldwin with goldfinches.

ANOTHER giant two-day sale on March 25-26 put together by David Lay (15% buyer's premium) saw the familiar rapid selling of two and three-figure lots, the cheaper ones mainly accounting for the unsolds, peppered with lots of more quality and wider interest.

Charles & Nell Vyse by Terence Cartlidge, published by Richard Dennis. ISBN 0903685949. £15hb AS reported, US input has seen price rises for Charles Vyse productions, and they are now highly coveted.

THE March 5 sale at Dee Atkinson & Harrison's (10% buyer's premium) West Yorkshire saleroom was the first antiques offering of the year and, after an 83 per cent selling rate on nearly 700 lots, the auctioneers took encouragement from the way the market seemed to be picking up, with furniture, at last, edging out of the doldrums.

SPECIALIST ceramics dealers will, once again, be gathering at the historic chateau at Enghien, 20 miles south west of Brussels, this week for the fourth staging of the Salon Céramique Ancienne (Oude Keramiek).

THE importance of exercising due diligence has been driven home in the most painful way for a dealer, whose oversight has cost them £12,000.

THE importance of colour to collectors of saltglaze ceramics was emphasised at BBR's (10% buyer's premium) March 7 500-lot specialist sale near Barnsley when the orangey-brown hue and unusual subject matter made an Ugly Woman saltglazed inkwell one of the most desirable entries.

IS there currently a more buoyant sector of the ceramics market than Beswick animals? Malcolm's No. 1 Auctioneers (12.5% buyer's premium) March 29 sale, held at Trustees Hall, Boston Spa, attracted what Malcolm Dowson estimated to be his largest ever attendance in over 20 years of auctioneering. The primary reason? A private collection of Beswick horse figures entered without reserve by a local resident who has decided to live in Spain.

The Death of Munrow, depicting the attack by a tiger on a certain Mr Munroe in 1793 when he was out on a hunting party on Saugar Island in West Bengal, is one of the most dramatic and celebrated subjects to be recorded in Staffordshire earthenware. As a result it usually commands a high price when it comes up for sale at auction but few could have predicted the $130,000 (£74,285) (plus buyer’s premium) realised for the example that appeared at Sotheby’s New York last week.

WITH sales of standard furniture chugging along – but at least finding buyers – Gildings (12.5% buyer's premium) of Market Harborough, in common with many in the provinces, looked to ceramics and clocks to provide the day’s highlights at their March 16 sale.

From the standpoint of manufacturing history, dispersals of any factory collection are always tinged with sadness.

NOT all the market resides in a state of stagnation.

A 100-LOT collection of Meissen, Derby and Cont-inental porcelain figures, together with some furniture and works of art from a local Thanet private vendor, formed the backbone of Canterbury Auction Galleries (15% buyer's premium) February 24 outing which attracted a large number of private buyers, many of whom secured the top ceramic lots.

WHILE Troika ceramics made up the first 150 lots at Burstow & Hewett’s (10% buyer's premium) March 17 sale, there was also more traditional fare on offer, such as this 9in (22cm) diameter pair of mid-18th century English (probably London) delft plates, right, each with a painted design of a cockerel and a flower in blue, green and orange.

As the most prolific of the 18th century English porcelain-producing factories, there is plenty of scope when it comes to collecting Worcester porcelain. There are few collectors, however, who can match the determination of Jeanne and Milton Zorensky.

This large and important Martin Brothers bird, pictured right and dated 1894, is the main highlight of a diverse sale of ceramics, glass, works on paper, furniture, textiles and metalware, relating to the Arts and Crafts movement inspired by William Morris, to be held at Woolley & Wallis' Salisbury Salerooms on May 26.

The hangar saleroom at Christie’s South Kensington was full to overflowing for the much-publicised sale of the Poole Pottery Museum collection and archive on March 31.

The 20in (52cm) high dinanderie vase by Jean Dunand, pictured, right, with original black patina and sleek Art Deco outlines belying its early date of 1913, zoomed to €60,000 (£40,000), five times the estimate, at the Tajan (20.33% buyer’s premium) sale of 20th century decorative arts on March 4.

YOU don’t see detailed architectural scenes that often on English porcelain. Such pieces are much more the preserve of Continental factories like Meissen, Sèvres or, most notably, Berlin. Their smooth, hard paste provides a better ground for the highly detailed, crisp painting these subjects demand. However, if topography is to be found on English porcelain, it is most likely be encountered on wares from the Derby factory which came nearest to emulating the Continental firms.