Poole Pottery

Fieldings Auctioneers founder Will Farmer has lent his support to Poole Pottery which is facing eviction from its Dorset home.

Arousing more immediate interest than anything when Shapes’ catalogue went online, this 16in (40cm) tall Deco period Poole pottery vase bore the impressed mark of Carter Stabler and Adams and the monogram of Truda Carter.

This stoneware model of a rhino led the latest sale at Cottees which proved to be one of the most successful the Poole auctioneers have held in recent years.

What may be a record price for the Poole artist Guy Sydenham was achieved at Cottees of Wareham when a stoneware model of a baby rhinoceros sold for £5000 at their latest sale.

IT is symptomatic of the changes in the Poole pottery market that the joint top selling lot in a large specialist sale last month was a 1960s rimmed dish.

MODELLED as a brickwork kiln, this rare stoneware lampbase was one of only four hand thrown by Guy Sydenham to commemorate the pottery’s centenary in 1973.

FOR more than a decade, Dorset saleroom Cottees have held biannual sales dedicated to Poole pottery. The most latest event had the sad distinction of being the first since the closure of the Poole Pottery just before Christmas.

From the standpoint of manufacturing history, dispersals of any factory collection are always tinged with sadness.

The hangar saleroom at Christie’s South Kensington was full to overflowing for the much-publicised sale of the Poole Pottery Museum collection and archive on March 31.

WHEN Poole Pottery went into administration last June, it could have been a sad day for one of Britain’s best-known producers of table, giftwares and art pottery. But the Dorset pottery has risen phoenix-like under new ownership and is once again producing ceramics as well as launching four new giftware ranges.

SHOWING until November 23 at Gary Grant’s gallery at 18 Arlington Way, London EC1, near Sadlers Wells, is a selling exhibition Post-war patterned pots which offers 110 pieces highlighting innovative designs on mid-20th century ceramics.

The September 20 auction of Doulton, Poole and Carlton ware at Christie’s South Kensington (17.5/10% buyer’s premium) was a three-part sale that gave two distinctly different performances.

Such is the ubiquity of lamp bases that have been converted from vases that rarely does one encounter a genuine collector’s item in this field, but this abstracted stoneware example produced for the Atlantis range of Poole pottery in the early 1970s, was a refreshing discovery. consigned to the Applied Arts sale at Sotheby’s South (15/10 per cent buyer’s premium) near Billingshurst on March 27.