Martin Brothers

Second sale since auction house move and name change is a British art pottery success

A missing Martinware bird has been recovered more than 15 years after it was stolen from Southall Library in Ealing, west London.

Topping a 360-lot, £242,000 single-owner collection of Martinware and Moorcroft at Kingham & Orme (23% buyer’s premium) was a Robert Wallace Martin grotesque bird.

More than 700 lots of Decorative Arts and Design spanning the 19th through to the early years of this century were offered for sale by Woolley & Wallis (25/12% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury over two days.

This Martin Brothers stoneware model of a tortoise with a mirthful face was a very welcome discovery for auctioneer Rupert Toovey on a post-lockdown valuation in the Surrey Hills.

The Box, a museum, gallery and archive set to open in Plymouth in May, has acquired a ‘colossal and extraordinary grotesque grinning crab’ by the Martin Brothers.

A sale at Rago Auctions (25% buyer’s premium) in its New Jersey rooms offered potential buyers the Andrew Furer and Elle Douglas collection: 27 lots of Martinware (mostly composed of the potters’ iconic Wally Bird creations).

The modern market for Martin Brothers pottery has been defined by key exhibitions and the sales of important collections. Here is ATG's pick of five events in the last 50 years.

A large selection of around 250 lots of Martin Brothers wares will be offered in the next British Art Pottery sale at Woolley & Wallis on November 27.

‘Dream’ Martinware cache from family of factory patron surfaces for sale in Berkshire

A single-owner collection of 27 pieces of Martin Brothers art pottery will be included in the Design sale series to be held by Rago auctions in Lambertville, New Jersey.

Maidenhead auction house Dawson’s is to sell a collection of Martinware on behalf of descendants of an important patron of the Southall pottery.

A new auction record for the idiosyncratic stonewares of the Martin brothers was established at Phillips’ Design sale in New York.

Believed to be unique, this grimacing stoneware dog jar and lid from the Martin Brothers pottery is up for auction at Salisbury saleroom Woolley & Wallis on December 12.

Gloucestershire-based British art pottery dealer Alison Davey of AD Antiques has created a series of ‘passports’ for Martin Brothers’ birds.