Strike fund

This week saw the start for the University and College Union 14-day strike. So my partner and me are both out on strike.  Suddenly having time our hands is giving us a little taste of what retirement may be like  As is the falling income that, in retirement for real, will fall even further if Universities UK get their way.
Anyway, on a positive note there are a few advantages to employers cheating on deals.  For a start, it does give you a rarely felt sense of being the master of your own destiny and not a wage slave. It's also given me time for walks in the late winter sunshine and time to post on this blog again.  And it's given me reason to list a few pots for sale n eBay, to contribute to my own personal strike fund. I think I have enough pots to hold out for years that way.
The pot above, I'll not be listing (unless the strike goes on for months), is an early Carter and Co stoneware vase.

Mask vase

This vase was sold to me by a collector who had found it himself at the Cottees auction of September 2010.  It was designed it was designed by James Radley Young and dates from between 1915 and 1921.

Memento Mori

Remembering that you have to die isn't as popular as it once was. But it must be a thought that crops up every now and then for most collectors, who (for each pot) are just the latest custodians in a growing line or predecessors.  This little BV pattern, Portuguese stripe, stoneware jug, I won at the Cottees' Poole Pottery auction in April last year (lot 318).  Its just 7 cm in height and shape number T323 (theT tells us that its a piece of tableware). It was made in 1921.  I don't know how it found it's way into the Cottees sale, but the sticker on the base tells us that it previously belonged to Albert E. Wade, and was sold (as part of lot. 189), along with the rest of his collection of pottery, at Sotheby's in 2002.  I'm hoping it will be quite a few years before it goes to market again.

New Favourite

I love the early Carter and Co, tin glazed, Blue Stripe pots and this one, that came from eBay 2 weeks ago, is my best yet.  It's just 5 inches tall, potted from white stoneware, and has a particularly thin application of the white slip these pots were dipped in, leaving exposed much of the rough stoneware surface.  There are some thicker globs of slip around the rim, but the over all surface has a parchment quality that adds to the watercolour on paper look of the blue painted lines.  Its signed with the MC mark used by Sissey Collett.

A Little Jaded?

I went to the antiques fair at Keddlestone Hall near Derby yesterday.  It's smaller than the fairs at Newark and Lincoln, but the park of this grand country house makes a very nice venue.  I came away empty handed, as I often seem to do from fairs these days, but had more luck last week at the Woolley and Wallis auction where I won this green lustre glaze Cater & Co vase.   It was made at Poole Pottery sometime between 1908 and 1918, its pretty rare, in perfect condition and the glaze has a gorgeous petrol on water iridescence. There is a red vase of the same shape in the Haward and Atterbury book "Poole Pottery"

Blue Stripe Ware

This is the second early Poole Pottery vase that arrived in the post this week.  Again, it's another James Radley Young design, this time painted by Ann Hatchard, right at the start of her career in about 1918.  It's 7 inches tall and appears to have inscribed writing on the base that reads no 148.
Finding all of these Carter and Co vases recently has prompted me to read again some of Jennifer Hawkins book "The Poole Potteries".  This is probably the most scholarly of the Poole reference books written. In her book Hawkins describes these pots in chapter 3 as "blue stripe ware" decorated with "plain stripes from top to bottom ...or rather more elaborate versions including diamonds and lozenges".
Reading about these early pots has also reminded me of a nice Carter & Co connection to my home city of Sheffield.  William Carter Unwin (chief sculptor in the architectural pottery) and James Radley Young, both trained at Sheffield School of Art, and Jame Radley Young's half brother Edwin Page Turner also born in Sheffield,  was the first identified painter at the Carter tile works.

Snatched from the Jaws of Defeat

I drove down the A1, first thing this morning, full of hope and excitement for what I might find at day one of the Newark antiques fair.  Three hours later, I was driving home tired and empty handed, but then, I found this vase waiting for me, in a box, on top of the wheelie bin, where the the postie had left it.  The vase had been sent by a fellow Poole collector (together with another early vase that I will share another day).  In truth I was expecting it, but it arrived a couple of days early and just in time to save the day.
And what a trophy it is, this early unglazed Carter & Co vase, designed by Jame Radley Young. It dates from around 1914 and has a bit of a pre-Columbian look (a possible influence that was fashionable at the time), with it's three slightly animal head-like handles. This very vase also appears on page 57 of the Robert Presoct-walker book "Collecting Poole Pottery"

Any Excuse

I spotted this vase advertised online for sale at an antiques center in West Yorkshire, so it gave me a great excuse last weekend to visit a friend, who happens to live in that part of the world, for lunch and some shopping!  Made by Carter & Co this early tin-glazed, stoneware, Poole Pottery vase was made between 1918 and 1921.  It's signed by the decorator MC and painted in an unnamed pattern designed by James Radley Young.

A Bit Rough Around the Edges and Just About Perfect

Apart from the heavily thrown shape and the blurred, wabbley and sometimes absent decoration, this early Carter & Co, tin-glazed, stoneware vase (c1915) unfortunately also has an old chip on the rim.  Otherwise it's absolutely perfect.  Signed MC and carrying a hand inscribed mark reading Carter and Co Poole on its upturned base.

What Friends are for

I called in to the Victoria and Albert Museum last weekend, dragging behind me a long suffering friend who was putting me up for the night.  Fortunately perhaps for him, the ceramic galleries were closed (due to high visitor numbers in the museum as a whole?) but in Room 74 I did manage to find this Roger Fry designed Tin-glazed earthenware part tea service made by Carter & Co for the Omega Workshop in 1915.

http://collections.vam.ac.uk/item/O1240604/teacup-fry-roger/

100 Years Ago - Where it all began

I stretched myself a little to buy this vase from eBay last week.  It's just over 5 inches tall and made from a white stoneware.  The base has been left unturned and you can feel all the trowing ridges that have been unevenly covered in a white tin glaze, then painted by a slightly wobbly hand.  There's no shape number or pattern code, but just the painted mark used by Anne Hatchard (1918-36), and a CARTER & CO stamp that I imagine was more commonly used on their tiles.  Dating to about 1918, vases like this were the forerunners of all that was to follow at Poole Pottery over the next couple of decades.
I'm very chuffed to own it and can see it being my favorite vase for quite a while.

Around the Houses

I tried to buy this vase unsuccessfully, online from the Reeman and Danisie sale in Colchester, at the start of December last year.  It was for sale as part of a lot of two similarly shaped vases. The rustic "unfinished" surface makes for very certain identification.  Luckily, a second chance came within a couple of weeks when it turned up on eBay.  Quite a few pot seem to surface at auction houses only to reappear on eBay. There may be a profit to be made there, but I think in this case the original buyer may have been after one vase and not the other.  I would have been happy with either, and would have kept both, but this way at least the joy is shared.
This style of unglazed  pottery was developed by James Radley Young, through the war years, from 1914. It is signed on the base Carter Co Poole (mark used from 1908 until 1921), together with an inscribed No.9 and a painters mark M-C.

The markers mark

James Radley Young was making vases like this one, unglazed and decorated in "Egyptian" patterns, during the first world war. This vase, has an impressed Carter and Co Poole signature on the base, so it dates from some time prior to 1921.  It also has a rather nicely impressed thumb mark, visible on the photo about half way up on the right.  Picking the vase up now, the indentation fits the side of my thumb quite snugly, as it would have done the potter as he or she first lifted it from the wheel.

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.

Carter & Co

I'm meant to be focusing on updates to the main website this week (and last week, and the week after) but when this arrived through the post this morning, I couldn't wait to post a photo here.  

This is now my oldest Poole pot by a good few years.  It's an example of unglazed ware developed by James Radley Young, through the war years, from 1914.  It is signed on the baser Carter Co Poole, a mark used from 1908 until 1921.