Fantastic Art Deco Poole 113 QD

I love this vase and eBay.  So much so that I'm spending the entire bank holiday updating my web pages so I can post it on there too.  It's 13cm tall and painted by Doris Marshall between 1926 and '34.

Traditional Paisley Pattern Jug 559 OR

This eBay find was painted by Marjorie Batt who worked at Poole from 1925 until 1935 before returning for one year at the end of the war in 1946.  

Poole Delphis Bowl Shape number 38 Christine Tate

This little bowl arrived from eBay this week.  It's shape number 38 (12cm in diameter), has a nice "Sea Crest" style mottled underside, and great colours inside painted by Christine Tate sometime between 1968 and 70.

Poole Twintone C95 Coffee Pot

The C95 colour combination was in production from 1950 until 1956.  The shape was designed by John Adams in the mid-1930's.  Alfred Read updated this shape in the early to mid 1950's with a round button-shaped finial.  This one came form a Twintone collector at the Elsecar Antiques fair earlier this month.

"Leo the Lion" V Pattern Vase Painted by Ruth Pavely Mid-1930's

This is my latest eBay find.  It's shape number 620 and measures about 7" round.  I think it works really well with this pattern and is currently pride of place on our mantelpiece.  

Poole Olympus Range Pot

This is a hand-thrown, grey stonewear vase, shape no. 60A from the Olympus range designed by Ros Sommerfelt in 1971.  This one is sprayed with Black Panther glaze but they also came in stony colours too.  I'm sure these must have been quite labour intensive for the times and i guess relatively expensive.  I'm not sure you'd want more than one or two in any collection though.  
Black glazes unfortunately don't work very well with my efforts to create a black theme for the blog.

Poole Contemporary Patterned Cucumber Shape Dish 145 TNC

I keep meaning not to collect any more Freeform or Contemporary Poole as the prices are still so high. But I've wanted one of these smoky coloured fat cigar shaped (cucumber) dishes for ages now - to match the other one I have (ROC pattern).  

I always think these look a bit incongruous: The kitsch cucumber shape designed I think by John Adams in the 1930's, and the pattern from the atomic 1950's.  The form insists on been a cucumber with its little tail-end but the pattern keeps trying to turn it into some sort of  racing Zeppelin with red electrons all excited on the surface.

Another Matching Pair

Two fairly boring screen printed images on oblong pin dishes. Thomas Becket former Arch Bishop cum saint and the Cathedral in which he was murdered/canonised at Canterbury.

The joys of collecting and making things match, even when they weren't intended to. The Becket dish was produced in 1970 (800 years after he died), the Cathedral dish from about the same time.  I have a similar illustrated plate showing Lincoln Cathedral and there may be other churches done in this style out there but I suspect they only did one saint.  I'm not sure how many sold but I image they churned them out.

Twins

I was dead cuffed with the little vase, won on eBay, posted below.  I'd not seen the pattern before, or not that I could remember at least, so I thought it must be quite a rarity.  Then, within a week, another one came up as a buy-it-now item, same shape, pattern, and identical stamp and decorators mark for Ethel Barrett, only from a different seller.  So I had to buy-it, even though for a bit more than the first one cost.

I think sometimes eBay works like that - seeing an item on there, I guess, may sometimes prompt someone else to sell one they own themselves.  Things do seem to clump together sometimes and it seems that the kind of Poole for sale on eBay now, is different to what was there when I first started looking and collecting in the mid-1990's.   Back then, for example, there seemed to be endless amounts of 1980's calypso vases in pastel glazes.  I even brought one of them!  Generally, I think there are far more good and even top quality pots for sale these days and I kind of think, that some of the pots that were for sale back then, have now become so common place that no one wants to buy or list them any-more.  Or maybe its just that I'm blind to them.
I read somewhere on-line too, that one effect of eBay is to make the genuinely rare appear much more commonplace (and it may, in that way, deflate prices), but I'm sure that eBay is capable of throwing up all sorts of strange coincidences. Maybe when your dealing with such a mass phenomena, statistics go a bit weird, like the laws of physics do when you get down to the quantum level.  

Well, this isn't a philosophy blog, and I'm sure both these vases are a bit of a rarity anyway.  I'm just hoping I don't see another one  for many years to come.  I've taken a photo of the two side-by-side - as they do look nice together.  

Early Geometric Pattern Pot

This pot looks slightly naive and really lovely. It's only 8.5 cm tall and the opening is only 3 cm it's shape number 585.  It's painted in KO pattern by Ethel Barrett some time between 1922 and 27.  It was from eBay last week.