Ceramics

THE Lyon & Turnbull sale at Edinburgh got off to a splendid start when Lot 1, a Worcester porcelain plate from the Duke of Gloucester service, c.1770, sold at £12,000.

TO many people, Geoffrey Godden is indivisible from English porcelain. The scholar and author is a name on every ceramic enthusiast’s bookshelves through the many books on English ceramics written during the course of his 60 years of collecting and study.

CERAMICS dealer Jonathan Horne, former Chairman of the BADA and Past Master of the Guild of Arts Scholars, Dealers and Collectors, was awarded an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list for services to English ceramics.

THE first slice of the Longridge collection of early British pottery and European vernacular works of art, formed over 30 years by American Syd Levethan, was sold in two sessions for £2.93m by Christie's in King Street on June 10-11.

NEW data released about thefts from large country houses highlights the targeting of valuable porcelain by criminal gangs over the last three years.

MORE than 130 pieces of Caughley blue and white porcelain from a Worcestershire collection sold for £56,000 when it returned to Shropshire for sale at Halls in Shrewsbury.

GORRINGES are to offer for sale paintings and works of art belonging to Grace Higgens, the former housekeeper at Charleston Farmhouse, the Bloomsbury Group's Sussex retreat.

OF all the many subjects painted by Harry Davis during his long tenure at the Royal Worcester factory, among the rarest and most desirable are polar bears in an Arctic landscape.

THE highlight of Dreweatts' January 13 furniture sale at Donnington Priory was a pair of monumental, late 19th century Italian, sculpted alabaster, twin-handled urns.

This graduated pair of Staffordshire shaped oval meat platters are printed in green with scenes from the rare and desirable ‘Arctic Scenery’ series.

THIS 17in (43cm) oval serving dish, seen at Chiswick Auctions latest sale, is from a breakfast service ordered by George III from Flight Barr and Barr of Worcester in 1805.

Politically correct it is not, but the ‘Negro Cricketer’ pattern, produced for just one year in 1907, certainly ranks among the rarest and most desirable of Royal Doulton series wares.

It was Moorcroft’s take on flambé glazes that produced the highest price at Bonhams’ latest Ceramic Design sale.

KNUTSFORD, Cheshire auctioneers Frank Marshall sold this remarkable pair of Chelsea Blue Triangle period sauceboats c.1745-49 for a house record £41,000 on September 8.

THIS rare Meissen figure group modelled by J.J. Kandler, titled The Stormy Lovers sold for £26,000 at Paul Beighton's latest sale.

POLICE are on the look out for two people following the theft of a pair of 19th century Coalport vases from an antiques centre in Shropshire.

THE so-called Frog Service made by Wedgwood for Catherine the Great was one of the most prestigious creations by the Staffordshire entrepreneur and one that helped forge his international reputation.

HAUGHTON Fairs are to move their venerable International Ceramics Fair & Seminar from its long-time home at the Park Lane Hotel, Piccadilly to the Mall Galleries on Carlton House Terrace, SW1.

THE English Ceramic Circle’s annual loan exhibition marks the launch of a major research project to record dated and documentary English pottery and porcelain on their website.

JUST when you thought it was safe to go back into the softening Martinware market, along comes a £26,000 spoon-warmer.