Teapot

Highlights from the Coslov collection of English majolica will be on show in London next month prior to their sale at Freeman’s in Philadelphia on October 7.

ELIZABETH Craven was no shrinking violet, even when judged by the freer moral standards of 18th century England.

THERE was high drama at the Mackworth Hotel, Derbyshire on April 15 when a creamware teapot and cover carrying a telling political message sold for £69,000.

The majolica market may have cooled a little since the white hot days of the 1990s but rarities still have the capacity to command imposing sums at auction.

Rare and significant works of art from the Old World will just occasionally surface, unrecorded, in the New.

YOU wait forever then two come along at once. The sentiment so often expressed about London buses could equally well apply to rare early 18th century Continental porcelain teapots.

SHALL I be mother? At first glance there’s nothing very exciting at all about this Edwardian teapot. Decorated with printed, painted and aerographed flower sprays against a graduated green and yellow ground and highlighted by burnished gilt, it is typical of the cheap and cheerful earthenwares churned out in their thousands in Staffordshire at the turn of the last century.

WITH the King Street sale devoted entirely to Continental material, it was left to Christie’s South Kensington rooms to offer a home-grown element with the morning half of their sizeable 393-lot, June 24 British and Continental ceramics offering.

The oriental inspiration of this 51/2in (13cm) high Meissen teapot of c.1728 extends not only to its finely painted figural decoration by J G Horoldt but also to its peach-shaped form. At £78,000 it made the highest price in a single-owner collection of Meissen porcelain held at Christie’s on July 8.

Shanklin Auction Rooms have taken what they believe to be a record price for a Worcester teapot. The Isle of Wight auctioneers expected a bid of around £1000 for the rare c.1760, 5in (13cm), first period Worcester pot (pictured) and were amazed to see it knocked down to a London dealer for £11,000 (plus 10 per cent buyer’s premium).

The Artful Teapot by Garth Clark, published by Thames & Hudson. ISBN 050051045 £28 hb

UK: What is arguably the definitive collection of small teapots could prove to be a ‘nice little urner’ for a new regional auction house.