Come and Buy Me

Today (at least) I managed to resist the collective pressure of online retailers and TV media "news" reports, and not shop online during "Cyber Monday".  

Instead me and a friend visited the antiques fair at the Lincoln Show Ground: The results of which I'll photograph and post pictures here in the next few days.  Until then, it's high time I shared this jam pot that came from eBay a month or so ago.    

It was made in 1921 or '22 from grey coloured stoneware, covered unevenly with a grey glaze and decorated with repeated "sprigs" of blue flowers, with a pattern code H.  The shape number T288 is the same as the later and much more refined shape of jam pot Poole made throughout the later '20s and '30s. But here the bowl is more barrel like, the lid much more flat in profile, and there's no teardrop shaped finial.

It does feel like it comes from a more simple and less commercial time.  Which in 1921 must have been the very impression the makers intended. 

Spear again

Here's another really quite gorgeous spear shaped Delphis dish that was on eBay recently.  It has a thought through design, subtle reds, and a nice strong blue with a bit of texture. Painted by Christine Tate. So definitely another one for keeping, and not gone tomorrow.  

Third one this month - I just need to find someway of displaying them all.

Guy Sydenham Jugs

I won these two amazing sculptural jugs at the Cottees Poole Pottery sale last weekend.  I like them so much that posting just one photo just wont do. The Jugs were one of a group of Guy Sydenham lots that had been entered into the sale by Guy's wife Joan Sydenham, so I guess, they had been part of their own collection from the time that Guy made them.  The glaze and carving is very similar to the Poole Pottery Atlantis ware that Guy developed, but these were made in his studio on Long Island in Poole Harbour.  Both jugs have an impressed GS Island mark with two duck feet just under the handles, which dates them to between 1960-1968 - I think.

These Jugs have also inspired a new page on my website www.robspoolepottery.co.uk/guy_sydenham.htm

And the Leaves that are Green Turn to Brown

November is almost over, but it's been a late Autumn this year and this plate is really quite vibrant, I think, for Aegean. Which is why it stood out at the Doncaster Racecourse antiques fair a couple of weeks ago.  Unsigned, shape no.3, 8" diameter.

Could Try Harder

Cottees Auctioneers in Wareham held one of their Poole Pottery sales yesterday. I was bidding online and won just one of the dozen or so lots I tried for.  The four spice jars above were the first of my lots to come up, and although I lost these, I now wish I had tried a bit harder to win them.  It's just hard bidding twice the estimate for pots with so much damage to them.  
I have my own set of jars here  http://robspoolepotterycollection.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/early-storage-jars.html and V&A have their lone Pepper and Currents jars, but I had no idea that Peppercorn, Ginger, Mixed Spice and Nutmeg ever existed until I saw these pot  listed in the sale.    So at least, now I know there are more jars out there to complete my collection, and very possibly more than the four shown here.  I just need to keep a look out over the next few decades waiting for them to come my way.

Full Steam Ahead for Delphis

In recent years my Delphis buying has tailed off to a dead-slow pace, but in the past few weeks eBay has been awash with too much Delphis gorgeousness for me to resist.  This Spear dish was painted by Carol Holden, I think,  in 1968.  '68 was the year that this spear shape was introduced and this dish like other early ones has no foot ring, but instead little stubby feet. So I think it dates from the first year and it is so beautiful that I just couldn't let it all sail by.

Shirley Campbell

A bit slow in posting, but here's the second Delphis plate.   This one is shape no. 4, it's just over 10 inches in diameter and painted by Shirley Campbell in the late 1960's.

Delphis Spear Shape

This is one of two spectacular Delphis plates that I won on eBay recently.  I think this is probably the nicer of the two, but it's often the way with Delphis on eBay that the pots look better in the flesh.  This was painted by Margaret Anderson in 1967.

Suddenly the World Went Wireless?

Poole Pottery produced commemorative plates for quite a few companies that, for some reason, went bust shortly afterwards.  There's probably more to it than that though  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Telephones_and_Cables