Ceramics

Lowestoft porcelain specialist and Suffolk auctioneer Russell Sprake is marking 50 years in the auction business this month with perhaps his finest ever sale.

High Court judge to decide if 10,000-piece holding must be sold off

SOME fine early English porcelain came up at the latest sale held by Chorley's of Prinknash Abbey, Gloucestershire.

THE Edinburgh sales at Bonhams and Lyon & Turnbull in August both featured Wemyss wares, offering an opportunity to assess the current market.

The auction of British ceramics at Bonhams on May 18 was the first at New Bond Street for six months and it was a big ensemble made up of the usual range of single-owner collections mingled with material from various vendors.

ANY perception that the demand for top English delftwares had softened seems to have been scotched by the huge competition for this 17th century London-made mug.

IT is symptomatic of the changes in the Poole pottery market that the joint top selling lot in a large specialist sale last month was a 1960s rimmed dish.

THOMAS Grant Dixon formed his Worcester collection from 1940-70. This discerning collector was a great friend of H. Rissik Marshall, the famed Worcester collector and author whose collection now resides in the Ashmolean at Oxford.

THE 16-lot section devoted to Martin Brothers art pottery at Bonhams' latest Ceramic Design sale provided a number of the notable results.

HAMPSHIRE auctioneers Jacobs & Hunt of Petersfield achieved a new house record when they sold this 17th century Italian specimen marble plaque for £37,000 last month.

ON the evening of Tuesday, March 1 thieves broke into Willingham Auctions and stole four fruit-decorated Royal Worcester vases.

STOKE on Trent will shortly host the largest exhibition of Shelley and Wileman ceramics since the factory’s closure in 1966.

A PIECE from a celebrated but elusive porcelain service that turned up at the latest sale at Aguttes in Paris understandably caused great excitement.

ESTIMATED at $20,000-30,000, this Vezzi porcelain octagonal teapot and cover attracted great interest among European buyers at the latest sale held by Skinner in Boston.

MODELLED as a brickwork kiln, this rare stoneware lampbase was one of only four hand thrown by Guy Sydenham to commemorate the pottery’s centenary in 1973.

PICTURED here is one of more than 100 polychrome Delft tiles, valued at hundreds of thousands of pounds, stolen from a leading collector in the Netherlands.

WHEN auctioneer Mark Oliver climbed down off the rostrum after completing a 650-lot marathon double sale of British art and collectors’ pottery, Bonhams had netted just shy of £720,000.

THANKS to a clever bit of detective work by one of its curators, the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle has been able to reunite a porcelain cup and saucer that have separated for over 200 years.

THIS 8½in (21cm) English porcelain jug painted with a cavalryman on horseback probably dates from c.1817 when, following rioting in the spring, magistrates in Manchester decided to form the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry Cavalry.

AN extraordinary legal loophole threatens to decimate the unique collection of the award-winning Wedgwood Museum in Stoke-on-Trent.