Royal Copenhagen

This Royal Copenhagen dish was also at Newark last week but now lives with me.  I couldn't resist buying it because it was so cheep but it's such a quality pot in pristine condition.  I suspect it's hand painted because of its wibbly wobbly lines and the sheer number of monograms, numbers and squiggles on the back. It's differnt in style, but the same shape as this Royal Copenhagen dish I found last year.

T G Green Sugar Sifter

There are just so many lovely pots to stumble over while hunting for Poole at antiques fairs, and it's hard to ignore their charms for ever.  So this is the first of two non-poole items I found a Newark last week.  

These blue and white T G Green Cornishware sifters, also come labeled for flour and salt, but I thought this sugar one would be most useful.  But practicality aside, I love it's sailor hoops, bowler hat lid and the amazing screw thread,  turned or cast into the ceramic, that holds the lid and base together.

My Fine Four Fendered Friends

Sometimes I don't quite appreciate how special something is until it's photographed and posted on here. Which is how it's been with these Carter tiles.  When I found seven of them at the Newark Fair yesterday, I was pretty underwhelmed really, but brought them just because they were cheap.  Looking at them now, I think they have a real 1960's period charm and were a rare find.  

Margaret Mathews designed the set of six (I've got one to swap if anyone's interested), screen printed  tiles in 1960.  They're each six inches square and the set is titled Veteran Cars and numbered VC1 to VC6. They're all in pristine condition and at Newark still carried their shop label below, stuck to the front of one of them and telling a sad story of remaindered stock, even after the price cut from 36 to 27 shillings.  After allowing for 52 years of inflation I still got them at half price.

GZ Jam Pot

Jam pots were some of the first Poole pots I collected.  It's no surprise - they're small, reasonably priced and have that lovely Poole teardrop finial.   This one I found on eBay recently, the pattern, GZ, is simple but quite effective, and I think fairly uncommon.  It was painted between 1934 and 1937 by Iris Skinner.  

Tomorrow, I'm off to The Newark Antiques Fair.  It will be the first time I've seen it on the first day, but then on day two I've often wondered (or annoyingly been told by a holder of a Poole depleted stall) exactly what I've missed.  So a friend has agreed to skip work with me, and splash out on the extra admission, at least for one time, and I'm hoping to be the first to spot more Poole gems like this.

Purple stripes

My latest vase from eBay is this early spill vase or tumbler, painted in fetching purple stripes.  These "Portuguese Stripe" patterns were originally introduced to Poole by James Radley Young in about 1915, but this LC pattern is a later adaptation by Truda Carter and dates to about 1923.  Painted by Ethel Barrett.

Technology lite

I've been a bit distracted from blogging this week, by my efforts to get my new phone to work, so far unsuccessfully, with my PC and email.  I wish we didn't have to think so hard about these things.  Anyway the very appealing low tech lighting solution here is decorated in one of my favorite patterns UL, painted by Marjorie Batt in the late 1920s.

Free side

And here's the tasty little accompaniment to the vase in the last post.  Delphis, shape number 31, painted by Loretta Leigh in 1970.

BOGOF

I found this vase listed with a little Poole companion on eBay a couple of weeks ago, and given its small size and geometric pattern it had to be mine, together with it's lucky (to join my collection) sidekick.  I've got another vase in this KZ pattern and 3 other vases in this 584 shape, but I suppose I wouldn't be much of a collector if I was content with just one.  

Staycation Jar

Besides the weather, shopping is the great joy of holidaying in rural Britain, at least if you prefer vintage Poole Pottery over Louis Vuitton.   

This pot I found last week in Durham House Antiques, located in the lovely market town of Stow-on-the-Wold.  It's made from red earthenware, but has a grey glaze that dates it to between 1922 and 1924, and it's signed by the decorator, Truda Rivers, who also started working at Poole in 1922.  It's painted in a pattern coded YV (which looks remarkably similar to XY pattern!) on a lovely footed apothecary jar shape, numbered 839.

It's a rare shape, that I've only seen a few times before, but then always without a lid, which I never expected it to own, and the lid is unlike any Poole lid I've seen, with the comma shaped decoration and octagonal finial.  So overall, I'm quite chuffed with it.

New Address

I've finally got a proper domain name for my website, and here it is

www.robspoolepottery.co.uk

I'll leave the pages at the old address too for a while, but probably wont update them anymore, so if you want to bookmark the site please use the address above.

Green Lantern

On the way back home from our summer holiday this week we took a bit of a detour, to the Wooley and Wallis sales room in Salisbury, to collect the lot I'd won in their June Arts and Crafts sale.  The photo doesn't do this little lustrous gem justice.  It stands just 11cm tall, on a base that's only 4cm in diameter.  There's a thick pool of lapis lazuli glaze around the circumference of the base which has been  been ground down to make a level footing and visible within that is the white stoneware body and the inscription "Carters". It's my earliest Poole vase (they don't come much older), and is from a range of lustre wares designed by Owen Carter between 1900 and 1908, decorated in reduced metallic glazes that he developed with James Radley Young and Alfred Eason.