Ceramics

The ceramics and glass offering at a recent Chiswick Auctions' (25% buyer’s premium) sale included a particularly fine Raeren salt-glazed jug c.1600.

Multi-estimate results greeted the Joyce Paretti collection of perfume bottles sold by John Nicholson’s (24% buyer’s premium) of Fernhurst in two instalments before and after the new year.

Much of the Clarice Cliff pottery that finds its way into UK salerooms is relatively inexpensive. However, a clutch of pieces by the Staffordshire born and bred designer due to go under the hammer over the next few weeks will attract those in the hunt for scarcer works.

Despite their small size and often unsophisticated appearance, Lowestoft models of animals are highly collectable.

As a general rule late Victorian ceramics are at a low ebb, and teasets in particular. Bucking that trend was the extraordinary bid for this Wileman Shelley six-place tea set offered by Lockdales (19.5% buyer’s premium) Martlesham, near Ipswich.

Collecting traditional English ceramics is still a popular pursuit on both sides of the Atlantic – but one where purchases are always tailored to fit the purse strings of the core collecting audience.

The contents of a country house near Tetbury yielded many of the better lots in a Chorley’s (20% buyer’s premium) sale in Prinknash Abbey which included a garniture of three Pinxton porcelain bough pots.

‘Wally’ birds are among the most coveted of all pieces made by the famous Martin Brothers.

A sensational result emerged for the artist-potter Hans Coper (1920-81) at the 20th Century & Contemporary sale at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood in Exeter.

E&H Manners holds a selling exhibition of rare English porcelain figures in its Kensington Church Street gallery this month.

Made in Switzerland for the Turkish market, in the late 19th century this zarf (coffee cup), below, had endured some rough treatment over the years before appearing at the Shropshire rooms of Trevanion & Dean (19% buyer’s premium).

A hitherto unrecorded teapot attributed to a pioneering North American porcelain factory sold last week for a remarkable £460,000 (plus premium) at Woolley & Wallis in Salisbury.

In the flourishing market of British studio ceramics, a raft of new names is gaining traction.

A small collection of 18th century European porcelain offered by Reeman Dansie in Colchester included this Meissen teapot and cover c.1725.

Outsold, predictably enough, by an 18th-19th century Chinese vase, two late 19th century Persian moulded pottery tiles were the eye-catchers among a buoyant Asian works of art section at Billingshurst auction house Bellmans (22% buyer’s premium).

Three 19th century porcelain figures from a Peoples of Russia series consigned to Lincoln auction house Golden Young & Mawer (20% buyer’s premium) by a local vendor attracted interest from the US to Russia.

The great Hungarian love affair with Zsolnay Pec ceramics goes on, most recently witnessed in the East Sussex rooms of Burstow & Hewett (15% buyer’s premium) when 27 lots were offered.