Royal Doulton

Among the most elusive of all Royal Doulton HN series figures is the curious model of a winged cherub astride a crocodilian known simply as ‘Boy on a Crocodile’.

In a marketplace seriously in need of entry-level collectors, the great majority of Royal Doulton character jugs and HN series figures are worth under £100 – and most of them less than £30 when sold without reserve at auction.

The attractions of variations from run-of-the-mill ceramics extends to all factories, and the recent sale of a Royal Doulton 'Nelson' jug showed how the presence of a rare backstamp mark can increase the value of an item 100 times over.

As ever, there was a large amount of Doulton Lambeth on offer at Bonhams’ latest Ceramics Design sale.

Politically correct it is not, but the ‘Negro Cricketer’ pattern, produced for just one year in 1907, certainly ranks among the rarest and most desirable of Royal Doulton series wares.

Melting bidders' hearts in a snow-covered Dorchester, this rare Doulton figure of a little girl cradling a doll proved the star attraction at Duke's sale on February 5-6.

Burglars made off with a large cache of Doulton figures and silver in a sophisticated raid on Bagham Barn Antiques of Chilham, Kent last month.

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.

Given the Potteries location, it is hardly surprising that Royal Doulton and Beswick have long provided Louis Taylor (12.5% buyer's premium) with their bread-and-butter business as well as many top lots. The first day of their quarterly fine sales is always devoted to these staples, predominantly sourced from private vendors living within a 50-mile radius of the Hanley rooms.

THE Lambert Collection of British art pottery and furniture comes under the hammer at Bonhams Bond Street (19.5/10% buyer’s premium) on September 22.

SAIREY Gamp and Tony Weller are two of the most commonly encountered Royal Doulton character jugs (and accordingly among the cheapest) but only very rarely are the two Dickens’ characters seen as bookends.

KEYS (10% buyer's premium) of Aylsham maintain the format of mammoth offerings – 1556 lots offered over two days (April 20-21) in this case – and, although only 60 per cent of them got away, there was plenty of material for budget-conscious collectors of such favourites as Royal Doulton character jugs and figures as well as Beswick Beatrix Potter and animal models.

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.

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.

THE figures after Louis Taylor's (12.5% buyer's premium) March 8 & 9 sale at the Hanley salerooms added to auctioneer Clive Hillier’s belief that the whole antiques scene is considerably brighter now than it was last year. “The sale went better than I expected and comes on top of our generally weekly sales regularly totalling £20,000 to £25,000 against the £12,000-15,000 they used to take,” he said.

To mark the last firing of a traditional bottle oven in 1978, the Royal Doulton factory produced a special backstamp to apply to the base of a few otherwise ordinary character jugs.

Auctioneer Geoffrey Barfoot has noted increased activity at the general sales in the Campsea Ashe rooms of Abbotts (10% buyer’s premium) and the mood has spread to fine art – “provided the lots are fresh to market and good or rare”.

Royal Doulton and Moorcroft collectors are always in abundance at these sales in the heart of the Potteries, and if their specialisms within their subjects sometimes make for hard going at the rostrum, the increasing demand for Royal Albert pieces was well catered for.

The curious inhabitants of Middle Earth have existed quite happily (and vividly) in the minds of readers since J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic The Lord of the Rings first appeared in the 1950s.

The Doulton Lambeth Wares by Desmond Eyles, revised by Louise Irvine, published by Richard Dennis Publications, The Old Chapel, Shepton Beauchamp, Somerset, TA19 0LE. ISBN 090368579 £60 hb.