Antiques Trade Gazette 19
Highlights from the Berk collection of Clarice Cliff sold by Lyon & Turnbull of Edinburgh.
Left: Circus teapot designed by Dame Laura Knight – £1800.
Below left: Blue W twin-handled Lotus vase – £3000.
Below: Inspiration Knight Errant charger – £3000.
Hans Coper’s Thistle proves best of English
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ENGLISH art pottery and studio ceramics dominated the Salisbury sale. The top two prices of the sale were won by pieces by the German- born potter Hans Coper (1920-1981). A monumental Thistle vase standing /2
in (47cm) high and consigned by
Coper’s neighbours Doreen and Ted Appleby who were given the vase as a gift, was described by Michael Jeffery as “the best example of Coper’s work to have appeared on the market in the last ten years, combining impressive size with a perfect provenance”. The T-material vase, glazed in white slip with a manganese interior, was exhibited at the Art Council’s 1984 exhibition of Coper’s work at London’s Serpentine Gallery, and is illustrated in Tony Birks’ book
Hans Coper
.Estimated at £20,000-
Ravilious, these pieces were displayed again the following year at British Art in Industryat the Royal Academy. The Berk collection included two sets
netted £184,000 in total, also featured a 47-lot Clarice collection accumulated by Carole Berk, an American English pottery enthusiast from Washington. Berk started collecting Clarice in the late 1980s, when she spotted the designer’s work for sale in Barney’s in New York, but has now decided to have a fresh start and sell most of her collection. Thirty-nine of the 47 lots from her collection sold, predominantly to English buyers, but with some pieces heading to South Africa and America too. A c.1930, Inspiration Knight Errant
charger, 17in (45cm) diameter and painted in coloured enamels, was one of two pieces to achieve the top price of the collection of £3000, its high estimate. Also selling at £3000 was a Blue W twin handled Lotus vase, 12in (30cm) high, which was estimated at £3000-4000. The Berk collection included seven lots
of Circuspattern tea and dinner wares designed by Laura Knight for Clarice Cliff c.1934.
Pieces from this extensive service, decorated with various designs of clowns, acrobats and performing animals, formed
part of the Modern Art for the Table
exhibition organised by Harrods in 1934. Shown alongside ceramics and glass designed by artists such as Paul Nash, Eric
of Circuspattern plates, a tureen, a teapot, a serving dish and a set of six coffee cups and saucers. Artist-designed Clarice productions tend not to be so popular with purists, who prefer the bolder, more archetypal designs, but this playful pattern has a strong following. The set of eight dinner plates, sold for £2800 (estimate £1500-2800) while the equivalent set of six went for £1600 (estimate £800-1200). Perhaps the most humorous piece, and certainly harder to find, was the teapot. The 7in (18cm) high vessel had a clown’s head as the finial and an extremely flexible acrobat curved over backwards to form the handle. Estimated cautiously at £400-600, it sold at £1800.
30,000, it sold for £22,000 to a new UK collector. It was surely a good buy. This collector may be new to the studio field, but he meant business and bought the other two Coper pieces in the sale. Also from the Applebys, another gift from Coper, was a small cup form on a drum base, 41
/3
high and glazed in black manganese with pressed dimples to each side, which went for £6000, twice the top estimate. From a different UK vendor was a /4
T-material, 81 in (21cm) Spadevase,
glazed in manganese covered in white slip, which sold at £14,000 above hopes of £9000-10,000. The sumptuous decoration of
Wedgwood Fairyland lustre is particularly popular with Australians and a Daisy Makeig-Jones design is often among the top prices of these sales. Here a pair of 12in (30cm) high Pillarvases, shape no.3451 and
Right: a pair of
Wedgwood Fairyland lustre Pillar vases by Daisy
Makeig-Jones – £13,000 at Woolley & Wallis.
consigned from a private UK source, doubled their estimate to sell for £13,000 to an Australian collector. There was an interesting section of fashion illustrations produced for Ulk magazine between 1927-1933 by the Jewish artist, Dodo Burgner, who was forced to flee her native Germany for London in the 1930s. The 12 original artworks offered here were from an archive found in a trunk in the attic of a house in North London a few years ago, one raft of which were sold in 20 lots at W&W in April last year, totalling £14,000. Burgner’s stylish Art Deco work has
no previous auction precedent but estimating with caution has proved sensible. Again, all of these signed and dated artworks found buyers, with strong private interest from the Continent and the UK, for a total of £12,930. The highest individual price of £4400 (estimate £400-500) was paid for Riviera-Zitat from February 1928 annotated in pencil and measuring 16 x 12in (40 x 30cm).
Above: a monumental Thistle vase by Hans Coper – £22,000 at Woolley & Wallis.
Below: Rationalisierung, original artwork for Ulk by Dodo Burgner, December 1928, page 404, signed and annotated in pencil, 2ft x 161
/2
in (61 x 42cm) – £2200.
in (11cm)
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