Ceramics

When Bill Kime, senior decorative arts specialist at the Waddington’s (20% buyer’s premium) saleroom, was contacted early last year by a couple from British Columbia about selling their collection of Martinware, he jumped at the chance.

Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood of Exeter plans to hold its first-ever 20th century and contemporary art and design sale later this month.

Leading Roseberys’ inaugural stand-alone sale of 20th century decorative arts on January 23 – the first under new head of department Fiona Baker – was this large Art Deco ceramic vase and cover (right) by the important French Art Deco ceramicist René Buthaud (1886-1986).

MADAM – I thought your readers might like to know that grant funding is available for anyone doing research that includes printing on British ceramics.

A specialist fair in London that was put together at top speed in under two weeks, with Christmas in the middle, has been judged a resounding success by the organiser Two C’s Fairs.

Alan Blakeman, lifelong rock climber and founder of niche business BBR Auctions in Elsecar, near Barnsley, had a good 2017.

A long-running biannual specialist fair has been renamed and will launch its first edition in London under a new organiser this month.

Two pre-Christmas sales, one at Woolley & Wallis (22% buyer’s premium) in Salisbury and one at Mallams (20% buyer’s premium) in Oxford, highlighted the move of studio pottery from esoteric niche into the mainstream market.

The late Gerald and Brenda Flowerday caught the collecting bug in the late 1960s, igniting a keen interest in 18th century English ceramics that would last for the next 40 years.

Jason Jacques’ eponymous Manhattan gallery specialises in art pottery, especially works from the 19th century and Art Nouveau period and work by modern studio potters. It is exhibiting for the first time this year at the 'Winter Antiques Show' in New York.

MADAM – I have just seen Roland Arkell’s article on the discovery of a John Bartlam teapot (ATG No 2323). You may be interested to know that I used to own two of the previously recorded pieces of Bartlam porcelain which were originally believed to be Isleworth.

A hitherto unrecorded teapot attributed to a pioneering American porcelain factory has surfaced in the UK.

The most desirable of all porcelain plaques produced by KPM in the late 19th century are those that leave little to the imagination. However, evidence of their continued popularity across many different subject matters came in the form of this example below.

For more than a generation students of American ceramic history were taught that the first successful producers of porcelain in North America were Gousse Bonnin (1741-c.1780) and George Anthony Morris (1741/5-73), who ran the short-lived American China Manufactory in Philadelphia between 1769 and 1772.

While English ceramics feature in most provincial sales, November provided four auctions where the market could be looked at overall.