“There is interest from Welsh
collectors but it is the Americans who are driving up prices,” says Carol Pugh, a dealer in Gaudy Welsh from Carmarthen. At the Dorking salerooms of Crows (10 per cent buyer’s premium) on March 28, this unmarked wash jug and bowl, decorated in an Imari-style pattern known to Americans as the ‘Aberystwyth’ (there are no patterns recorded by the manufacturers) was contested by three telephone bidders to a final price of £980.
In view of the heavy restoration this price was astonishing – almost double what one would expect for a Masons Ironstone (circle mark) jug and basin, and three times the value of a Staffordshire jug and basin of the same quality, but without the Gaudy designs.
An American love affair with Staffordshire pottery’s Welsh history
To what extent the bouyant market for Gaudy Welsh pottery would become deflated if every American collector realised it was actually made in Staffordshire, England, not Wales, is a pertinent question – given the misty eyed view of Scottish/Welsh/Irish history from the other side of pond.
