Sale-rooms
Beauty plus brains
Peter Watson
The secret of his success is that the lecturers at the seminar are truly interna- tional; he insists that they have the proper academic credentials and, most important of all, that they do not give general talks but provide new, unpublished research that is both interesting in its own right and useful to the trade.
This year there are 24 lecturers from Italy, Canada, Germany and France as well as Britain. Antoine d'Albis, chief scientist at the Manufacture Nationale de Sevres, will provide some new information on faking; Robin Reilly, now completing a two-volume study of Wedgwood, will give the first details of documentary discoveries he has made which help solve various puzzles in the life of the great man. Mireille Jottrand, conservateur at the Musee Royal de Mariemont in Belgium, will discuss how to authenticate Tournai porcelain sculpture.
The lectures flatter the trade, of course. They show that ceramics have a range and depth, an academic substance which is perhaps the equal of Old Masters. And of course the advances in research extend collecting. Terence Lockett, chairman of the Northern Ceramic Society, will provide the seminar with new discoveries about the mysterious English creamware factory known as 'Melbourne'.
Given this enthusiastic academic grounding it is ironic but no doubt instruc- tive that ceramics, like Old Masters, have been rather quiet in the past few years. There are signs of improvement this year, with British collectors now asserting them- selves. Some dealers, like Jonathan Home, say they are having a record year but that it has all been done on the telephone with little trade coming in off the street.
Movements reported by the trade in- clude a drift towards Regency and Empire taste, Vienna, Berlin and Meissen, and a preference for pottery to the extent where porcelain is now decidedly undervalued.
This is put down primarily to American tastes, where the more 'primitive', almost rustic feel of pottery is what appeals, compared with the greater sophistication and colour of porcelain. For example, in one recent auction a salt-glazed plain figure of a rabbit went for £8,800 whereas the coloured Chelsea original from which it was copied fetched £4,000 in the same sale.
And this is not an isolated example. It is relatively unusual for a porcelain teapot to beat £1,000 whereas an average pottery teapot can go for £3,000-£6,000.
Apart from the fair and seminar, Chris- tie's have a good sale of British ceramics on 6 June which includes an unusual circular Staffordshire salt-glaze polychrome box (£2,500-£3,500) and a number of shell- painted Flight and Barr vases and dinner services.
The Price Glover Collection of English pottery, also at Christie's on 14 June, is a fine assemblage formed since the 1950s by a man who was a Pan-Am pilot before the age of near misses. There is nothing near-miss about the collection, which has fine Delftware (an oval portrait plaque of Queen Anne), salt-glaze and a c. 1760 Whieldon-ware cat splashed in manganese (est. £8,000-£12,000).
On the same day Sotheby's has its sale of English and Continental ceramics, in which my favourite is not the creamware or the Staffordshire slipware chargers and dishes (creme brulde-ware to the jokers in Kens- ington Church Street) but the 16th-century Nuremberg stoneware stove, covered in 41 glazed tiles in ochre, manganese and a green that must be the envy of the grounds- man at Trent Bridge.
In fact, for all their academic strength. the best ceramics have promiscuous col- our, a glistening sensuality, tempting fra- gility. The ceramics world has thus achieved the distinction of having it both ways: for a few days this month it com- mands the moral high ground and, at the same time, wallows in an orgy of beautiful objects.
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