Like so many other dealers, Mrs Richards says this has been a difficult year, but she is guaranteed a good reception, and hopefully sales, at her exhibition which always attracts serious collectors who know the preparation that goes into this show, which invariably contains a number of rarities.
Some 60 specially bought pieces will be on sale at prices up to just under £10,000 and they cover a whole range of English pottery, porcelain and delft from the mid-18th century up to about 1830.
This year, though, the emphasis will be on Bow porcelains, white, blue and white and polychrome. The exhibition opens at 2pm on Tuesday October 7 but as in past years you can pick up an entrance ticket at Mercury from 9am.
Opening two hours earlier at noon, just around the corner at 109 Kensington Church Street, W8 is Simon Spero’s 21st annual autumn exhibition highlighting English Porcelain 1745-1792.
Of the 54 exhibits on sale from around £1100 to £15,000 more than 40 are fresh to the market from private collections, “an almost essential prerequisite for success at the moment”, says Mr Spero.
Just over a third of this year’s show is devoted to the collection of Chelsea porcelain built up by Robert Hill, a noted connoisseur who dealt with Simon Spero for nearly 25 years and by a process of constant refinement achieved not a large collection but one which featured pieces which were the finest of their kind.
The first 18 entries in the catalogue (which itself is a useful work of reference priced at £10 plus postage) comprise the Hill works, all from the first decade of the Chelsea factory. They reveal the collector’s personal preferences which were for the flared beakers of the triangle period, octagonal teawares and, most importantly, decoration of the highest order.
Coloured Bow is well represented at Spero’s alongside some excellent pieces from Vauxhall, Longton Hall, Worcester, Caughley and others.
Right: Bow is a feature of Mercury Antiques’ October exhibition of recent acquisitions which includes this c.1750 early Bow vase and cover, 81/2in (22cm) high, with some restoration and priced at just under £3000.
Ceramics high fliers target buyers with Bow and sparrow
AS has been their custom now for many years, two of Kensington’s top ceramics dealers hold simultaneous selling exhibitions from October 7 to 18. For the 24th year Liane Richards holds her annual exhibition of recent acquisitions at her shop Mercury Antiques at I Ladbroke Road, London W11, just off Notting Hill Gate.
