Not made in England but in Germany, the best fairings were made by Conta & Boehme of Possneck between 1850 and 1890. This company perfected the skill of mass production to such an extent that English manufacturers could not compete with them. Made for the huge English fair market, the original ideas and designs for fairings came originally from this country.
With seven levels of value, from £50 up to £3000 for the rarer Group X, which includes the average price paid at auction with a margin of 20 per cent either way, the alphabetical index to captions to a non-collector seems slightly weird and some of this must be lost in translation of the inscriptions.
Setting out his stall of Victorian mementos
Victorian China Fairings: The Collectors’ Guide by Derek H. Jordan, published by the Antique Collectors’ Club, ISBN 1851494464, £35hb. WITH a book dedication by the author to “all my non-collecting friends who I have bored silly over the years”, Derek Jordan has a massive private collection of these little Victorian/Edwardian china ornaments with their droll comments on life, buying his first three fairings at the Folkestone Antiques Fair.
