Ceramics

Leading a recent sale at Sheffield Auction Gallery (24% buyer’s premium) was a pair of George III ormolu mounted Derbyshire fluorspar candle vases.

Graham Slater’s collection that packed a Cambridge house provided 670 lots over two auctions

This Wedgwood creamware tea or punch pot commemorating the launch of a gun ship at Deptford in 1784 was among 29 lots from the collection of The Worshipful Company of Shipwrights sold by specialist Charles Miller.

The evolution of Berlin porcelain – produced by Royal Porcelain Factory founded in 1763 by King Frederick II of Prussia – was well illustrated by two vases which both went way over the estimates in recent sales.

Consigned from a private collection in Oxfordshire, a Wanli (1572-1620) mark and period blue and white jardinière sold for £40,000 at Chorley’s (25% buyer’s premium).

Sad news last week as ceramics firm W Moorcroft Ltd announced that it had ceased trading as of April 30. It appointed Moore Recovery to assist with placing the company into voluntary liquidation.

A large-scale work by Royal Worcester’s near-legendary craftsman George Owen (1845-1912) led a recent sale at Philip Serrell (20% buyer’s premium) in Malvern, Worcestershire.

Estimated at £500-800, this large Vauxhall salt-glazed stoneware tavern mug sold for £3400 at Moore Allen & Innocent (21% buyer’s premium) in Cirencester, Gloucestershire.

Collection amassed by Christie’s veteran Hugo Morley-Fletcher includes ‘special group’ of porcelain

Created shortly after the 1830 Revolution, when Louis Philippe ruled as ‘king of the French’, the ‘Service de la Chevalerie’ was a great example of romantic historicism.

Only a decade ago Carlton Ware designer Violet Elmer (1907-88) was a relative unknown compared with her contemporaries Clarice Cliff, Susie Cooper and Charlotte Rhead.

Shelley produced the geometric Vogue and Mode shape tea and coffee wares between 1930-32 - both the designs of Eric Slater (1902-84) who had worked at the factory since the end of the First World War.

New Zealand-born architect Keith Murray (1892-1981) began to make designs for Wedgwood on a commercial basis in 1933, joining a stable of designers that included Daisy Makeig-Jones and John Skeaping.

With this year marking the 100th anninversary of the exhibition that gave Art Deco its name, we report on the British designers whose creations appear on the market

Graham Slater (1927-2024) was fascinated by relics of Stuart and Georgian Britain. His wife Rosemary shared his passions, including his love of mudlarking, exploring the banks of the Thames for fragments washed up by each new tide.

Noke’s portrait of a humiliated child was one of the very first models from the Royal Doulton HN series

Among the most desirable of all Scottish garden ornaments are the Garnkirk urns, a pair of neoclassical vases first made for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

A spectacular Wedgwood Fairyland lustre vase in the Dragon King pattern has sold for $87,500 (£67,900) in Kansas.