20 19th March 2011 auction reports
■ Life back in the market as Shrewsbury saleroom sell study collection of ceramics historian
Roland Arkell reports
“CHARLOTTE Rhead has been in the doldrums for a few years, largely under-promoted and plentiful online. However, I detected a real enthusiasm for her rarer pieces. The Bumpus collection really was the sale from which to buy, given that so many pieces are illustrated in his book Collecting Rhead Pottery.”
A former head of broadcasting and
research for the World Service, the London-based ceramics historian Bernard Bumpus (1921-2004) is perhaps best known for his writings on pâte-sur-pâte. But he was also the leading authority on the Rhead family of potters whose talents were spread wide across a plethora of UK and US factories. The Bumpus exhibition and catalogue
Rhead Artists and Potters 1870-1950 toured a number of English museums during the late 1980s (beginning at the Geffrye in 1986), while his popular paperback guide Collecting Rhead Pottery: Charlotte, Frederick, Frederick Hurten was published in 1999. Following the death of his widow
Judith Bumpus year, his extensive reference collection is being dispersed: the Rhead archive sold in 196 lots by Shrewsbury auctioneers Halls (17.5% buyer’s premium) on February 9. It was both an insight into the man and an important test of the marketplace. The commercial fortunes of Charlotte
Rhead (1885-1947) – particularly the trademark wares she designed for Burgess
The Rhead family –
& Leigh of Middleport under the brand name Burleigh Ware between 1926-31 and later for A.G. Richardson of Tunstall, better known as Crown Ducal – received a signifi cant boost from the increased understanding of patterns and painters that resulted from Bernard Bumpus’s exhaustive legwork. Aided by the rise of eBay and online
trading, prices for the cheerful tube-lined designs rose across the board in the early Noughties and occasioned a clutch of landmark sums. The high watermark came in April 2004 when the Acle, Norfolk auctioneers Horners sold a Burleigh Ware charger decorated with a geisha for £4900. But things have really cooled since then. Jeremy Lamond, fi ne art director of
Halls who provided the succinct quote which begins this report, fi rst saw the collection at the Bumpus family home in London in April 2010. He was delighted to conduct the sale
but erred on the side of caution. It was a reference collection (condition was not always perfect) and he anticipated lightweight sums for the more common wares (by and large he was right), but there were also rare items and others that enthusiasts would covet, such as the examples pictured in the pages of the collecting bible. As it turned out, the response to
the Bumpus name was considerable. The auctioneers were inundated with condition reports from the UK dealing and collecting community, and sale day brought lots of activity both in the saleroom (an unusually large number turned out to view and bid in person) and on the internet, where one trader from the Stoke-on-Trent area proved a major infl uence. Among the most coveted pieces
produced by Charlotte Rhead while at Burgess & Leigh was a wall plate decorated with a pheasant and pomegranates within a border of peaches. A number of these have been on the
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market since November 2004 when Andrew Hartley (Ilkley, West Yorkshire) sold one for £3100. Such levels proved impossible to sustain
– another took just £1200 the following year at Golding Young (of Grantham, Lincolcnshire) – so it represented something of a return to form to see the Bumpus example, pitched at a modest £200-300, take £1450. A 16½in (42cm) Burleigh Ware plaque
in pattern 4118 with a galleon on high seas made a surprising £1000 (estimate £150-200) – a pair had taken £860 at Adam Partridge (North Rode, Macclesfi eld) in February 2010 – while there was bidding to £950 (estimate £100-200) for a Crown Ducal plaque in the Manchu pattern in shades of brown. Bernard Bumpus described this unusual colourway as a prototype of pattern 4511. The later version with a green ground is relatively
WITHIN THIS PANEL:
a selection of Charlotte Rhead for Crown Ducal wall plaques from the Bernard Bumpus collection. Most were illustrated in Collecting Rhead Pottery.
1. pattern 3272 Rhodian,17in (44cm), £340. 2. pattern 4921 Golden Leaves, 14in (36cm) £110. 3. pattern 4016 Blue Peony, 14in (36cm), £160. 4. pattern 4924 Carnation, 13in (32cm), £320. 5. pattern 2681 Byzantine, 17in (44cm), £170. 6. pattern 4511 Manchu prototype in brown, 14in (36cm), £950. 7. pattern 4036 Omar, 13in (32cm) shown at the British Industries Fair in February 1935, £480. 8. pattern 5391 Persian Leaf, 13in (32cm), £160. 9. pattern 4953 Foxglove, 14in (36cm), short hairline, £190. 10. pattern 4724 Edward VIII Coronation, 14in (36cm), £90.
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