I admit to having done far more than my fair share of idiotic things in my time. I know we all feel stupid when we forget an email attachment, but how about driving home from the grocery store without the groceries, or puting a cake in the oven only to find the butter needed for the recipe still sitting on the counter! As these number among my goofs,  who am I to criticize when I see things that might have gone wrong in the Potteries?  Instead, I can only laugh at very human errors that connect me to these long-gone potters.

The ALE BENCH below doesn't have much wrong with it. Most of us are familiar with what this uncommon group looks like. And who doesn't want to own one?

Haggar's Staffordshire Chimney Ornaments shows the version below. At first glance, I thought the figures had come off the base and had been glued back in the wrong place by an uninformed restorer.

Instead, the more I look, the more I am convinced the group was just made differently. You can see where the table once was positioned to the left of the platform rather than the right. The potter probably placed the lady in the center of the platform....and then he had to make it work. Note that the man is now on his knees and, best of all, the lady pinches his nose. Judging from the appearance of the group, it has not seen a restorer. Although the potter strayed from the expected layout for the components of this group, he certainly made the best of putting it right. If life gives you lemons, make lemonade!

Most of us have seen, at least in picture form, cockerel groups. They generally are composed rather like the group below.

But what happened here?  An additional figure, a boy holding a bird's nest, got placed on the base. All three figures are original to the group, so this was not a restorer muddying the waters. This whacky group is in the Willett Collection, Brighton and Hove Museums.

Can you spot the error on the Contest/Scuffle pair below, made by Dudson?  The left group was wrongly titled "Tenderness", and the painter simply painted brown over his mistake, but no amount of brown paint was going to conceal the problem....women who use make-up know how this feels!

Similarly this figure of Jupiter has been incorrectly titled "Hercules" on the front. Paint almost came to the rescue this time, and the painter sloshed some on his mistake. He also  painted the title "Jupiter" beneath. I have seen three or four Jupiters with this titling issue, clearly made on one of those days at the pot bank when all went pear-shaped.  

Figures with manufacturing flaws remind me of the words painted onto the side of a creamware jug that belonged to Ralph Wood: we make our pots of what we potters are. Can you not sense the frustration in the goofs shown here? For me, flaws also put a quick damper on my perfectionist collecting streak--an undesirable trait in a pottery collector!   

Friendship, Tenderness, Contest, Scuffle. We think of these figure groups as one, as a set almost....yet there is no evidence to indicate that the figures were sold as a set. Indeed, you most often see them as singles. Admittedly, they are in the same style, which is why determined collectors patiently assemble a foursome, such as the foursome below attributed to Ralph Wood.

I have in my collection a Tenderness group that I bought a long long time ago. You can see it in Peoples, Passions. It really is eye candy. Perfect condition, believe it or not, and the colors are as bright and fresh as painted yesterday--almost as if they were still just a tad wet.

As lovely as it is, the only thing that still mars my pleasure is that the dealers I bought it from turned to knife me in the back. TENDERNESS?  None in that relationship! Funny how one doesn't forget and how collecting is as much about collecting memories. Ah well!  I have long looked for companion figure groups for my TENDERNESS, and I noted the fine FRIENDSHIP on John Howard's site recently.

As fine as John's FRIENDSHIP is, it just wasn't as prettily colored as TENDERNESS, so I reluctantly abstained....but I am pleased to see the figure sold quickly. I am always thrilled when someone else appreciates beauty.

So if we have FRIENDSHIP and TENDERNESS, can SCUFFLE and CONTEST be far behind? Here we have CONTEST

And from my archive we have a rather pretty CONTEST SCUFFLE  pair but with bocages that have had restoration around the edges.

I don't know which pot bank made these figures, but note the bocage fronds each comprise three little leaflets. These bocage fronds occur routinely on figures that are of above average quality. You can see them again on this TENDERNESS, which I believe was made by the very same pot bank. 

While we are on this subject, I want to add that I have always suspected the design source for Scuffle and Contest to be European. to my eye, the figures just never look very English. Supporting this belief is this oak panel that sold at Dreweatt Neate in 2005. The oak panel was said to be continental, 18th century. 

Not the greatest picture, but you can see the motif clearly enough. If you stumble across something that sheds light, please share.

Next week, there will be no blog because I will be at the NY Ceramics Fair. If you have my newly released Volume 1, you have plenty of new material to enjoy. Vol. 2 will be available mid-year, and this week Schiffer told me that they intend releasing Vols. 3 and 4 together at year end, so the end is in sight!

I have followed up with Schiffer about the problems UK collectors are experiencing with book orders. Schiffer are transitioning to a new distributor, Gazelle

Phone: +44(0) 1524 68765;
E-mail: [email protected]
Website: www.gazellebookservices.co.uk

Please note that it will take through next week (Jan 17) to get the stock transitioned. In that time, orders can be placed, but shipping will be delayed during this transition.

ALSO
A collector in the UK tells me that he purchased a book from abebooks.com with no problems. The book is available on that site at a good price, so try that.

 So sorry for the inconvenience. Hopefully, distribution will now be on an even keel.

The excitement is building. The NYCF is almost here. For 5 days (and one glorious evening) the finest ceramics for sale in the world are clustered into one building.  I try to inhale deeply, to absorb everything....but frankly, most of those cups, plates and tureens and other once-useful objects leave me cold. I see their merit (especially when they are pottery rather than porcelain)...but, unlike figures, useful wares just have no soul. Figures, on the other hand, are so human, so engaging, and their mystique permeates the space around them. That is why we collectors, the enlightened few who 'get-it', pay the price for the privilege of sharing our homes with these fragile treasures.

Do you ever think about life in the Staffordshire Potteries between 1780 and 1840, in the decades when these figures were made?  Does it evoke images of, if not quite Downton Abbey, at least a green, idyllic pleasantness?  If so, do you have it wrong!  Think instead of Dante's inferno. Think of houses that were dank, dark hovels, no piped water for anyone, bone-chillingly cold winters, children who toiled from an early age in a working environment that was hazardous to all.....the list can go on and on, but to top it ALL, know that life then happened beneath a dense black pall of smoke that belched day and night from the potters' coal-burning kilns. The smoke routinely transformed day into night. It turned everything and everyone black and made it impossible to see across the road.  The reality is that the worst modern industrial complex in a third-world country is today more pleasant and livable than the Potteries must have been then.  To me, it is amazing that from this hell-hole came the brightly colored, charming, engaging figures we collect. Do they not pay tribute to the triumph of the human spirit???

On this freezingly cold day in North Carolina, I look with awe at this picture of a pair of deer that changed hands recently. Yes, I know real deer are never yellow, but a long-dead painter brightened his gloomy world--and ours--by taking artistic liberty of sorts with this pair of deer. 

These deer were made in the "Sherratt" pot bank. The bocage fronds (each comprises three oak leaves) and flowers are in a typical "Sherratt" combination. As I think we have discussed before, "Sherratt" used bases like this for other animals. The three flowers across the front  in the colors of orange, pink, and blue (the preferred "Sherrratt "house-colors" for painting bocage flowers) are seen routinely on these bases. Such bases are on the "Sherratt" beasties below.

Talking of sheep brings to mind a sheep I have been meaning to show you for a while. At 9.5 inches, this sheep is B-I-G. It is by far the largest sheep I have seen--and I know of only this example. Who made it? I just don't know. I have never seen a base decorated in quite that way either. Perhaps it was made by a small, short-lived pot bank---no surprise that running a business was hard and many pot banks didn't last long.  

At the time this big fella was potted, the Agricultural Revolution was transforming sheep into bigger and bigger animals. A century before, sheep had been scraggly inedible animals valued only for their fleece and perhaps their milk, but by 1820 people were staring in awe at seemingly over-sized sheep that were suited to middle class dinner-tables.  A long-gone potter's amazement is captured in this beautiful figure. 
 
I am not sure how I started writing about deer and ended up with a sheep--but to tie it all together, let me show you what I think is the tallest enamel-painted deer I have recorded. This splendid animal stands 13.5" tall, and, best of all, he has his original antlers and bocage. 

At the time he was made, the sport of deer hunting had been largely eclipsed by fox hunting because chasing fast-footed foxes was so much more fun! Deer had come to be valued as adornments for gentlemen's parks rather than quarry. I first met this particular deer in a private collection in the Cotswolds, but he has since jumped over to this side of the pond and resides in a Texas collection. If only figures could talk, you might say. But look again at your figures carefully . Each in its own way talks. Each is a prism through which we can peer at the past and learn of things that just might not have crossed our minds. As I always say, to hold an early Staffordshire figure is to touch the past.

PS: If you are coming to the NY Ceramics Fair (Jan 21-26), I would like us to meet. If it works for you, please email me.