A True Mate

Last week, a little pair of Staffordshire figures that Martyn Edgell has in stock appeared somewhere in the bowels of FaceBook. I know many of you shudder at the mere  mention of FaceBook, and I sympathize. I admit to scrolling through my feed each day to check for figures and pictures of my children, but beyond that, I really don't care. The average user, I believe, spends 50 minutes a day on FaceBook. I can tolerate a mere 5!

​Here are Martyn's, figures. They are charming pearlware deer. A pretty bocage pair, and a true pair--quite hard to find these days.

No sooner had these figures made their debut on FaceBook than a user questioned whether they were a true pair becaue their bases are not painted identically. Yes, yes, yes, they are a true pair, and  I don't think they could be truer. There is a little more brown on one base than the other, but the bocages match as do the deer themselves. It is common to see this sort of mismatch in figures that are true pairs.

The pair below is a very true pair. Notice that her base is far yellower than his. 

And the two figures below are a true pair, but his base and tree trunk are very much browner than hers.

Let's stop and remember that these figures were painted by hand, and that alone can account for the differences. In each instance shown here, it is possible that one painter painted both figures--or perhaps they were painted by two different individuals.

Add to this, we really don't know how figures were sold. Were they sold in pairs, or could you choose whether you wanted to buy a single or a pair? I suspect that many figures that we today think of as pairs were available for purchase individually.

I have two pairs of Neale tambourine player-piper figures in my collection. I don't normally duplicate, but in this instance I simply can't decide which pair to part with. 

This is the pair in the Potteries Museum

Here we have a pair that sold many, many moons ago at Christie's.

These figures, all made in the 1780s, are rare, and I can't track any other pairs in my archive. Their enamels are so very pretty and silky. Quite my favorite. Note that in each and every case, the bases do not match. Should I conclude that the figures were made for sale as individual figures? I am not quite sure. Notice that in most cases the clothing colors are harmonious, leading me to think that the figures were painted to stand side by side. Did the bases simply not matter? We will never know!

Even though I have yet to find a pair of Neale musicians with bases that match exactly, I can't dismiss the possibility that they were made as true matches but over the years they have been repaired to give what we see here. (Full disclosure: the first Neale pair shown here was bought as a pair; the second was bought as individual figures.) The more I think about all this, the further away from resolution I get!

As for FaceBook, consider joining the mystaffordshirefigures group, which boasts over 100 people--surely the tiniest FaceBook group! Interesting things come up, and postings are few and far between, so five minutes a week should be all that is required to keep abreast of what's going on.