I am always tickled when I detect a "married" bocage figure. By "married,"  I mean a perfectly genuine figure with a genuine early bocage....but the bocage and the figure were made by two different pot banks. How can this happen? It comes about when a bocage breaks, and a restorer uses a piece of bocage from another figure to "restore" it.  It takes knowledge of pot banks, their figure models, and their bocage structures to detect the resulting mismatch. If it has been well done, you really have to know your stuff to know that something is wrong, and I have seen dealers and auction house experts fooled---and that's why I am pleased when I am able to detect one of these bad marriages. Admittedly, it doesn't happen very often, but each time I get the same kick that I get out of solving a very difficult Sudoku!

This week, there is a married pearlware figure of a cow on eBay.  Here the marriage of figure and bocage is so obvious and so poorly done that I didn't get any thrill out of detecting it. There is clearly something very "off" with this pearlware cow.

The cow itself is a generic model, of the type that several potters made. The problem is that the bocage is a piece of "Sherratt" bocage. The bocage looks like it has been reattached, so your first thought might be that this is a simple repair: the bocage broke off and was stuck back on. The problem is that "Sherratt" did not make this cow model, so the "Sherratt" bocage does not belong here!

If you look at the cow from behind, you can see green marks to the left of the bocage. That is where the original bocage once touched the cow's back. The bocage sits awkwardly, and the restorer made up a leaf on the right side. 

Below, you see how this little cow might have originally looked. This particularly good example (courtesy Andrew Dando) is unmarked, but it is the style of Salt figures. Other potters made very similar pearlware cows. See Staffordshire Figures 1780-1840, Vol. 3 for more examples.

Below is a small "Sherratt" cow pair, with this frequently-used "Sherratt" bocage (oak leaves with may flowers) as it should look.

So what's to be done with a quite ordinary pearlware cow that loses its bocage? I truly don't know. The figure is not exceptionally rare, so its value in that state is minimal. I admire someone's determination to preserve the figure for future generations, but I wouldn't want it on my shelves. If you want it, you can find it on eBay with a very high starting bid of £250 (item 111581066650)  It is listed as "sold as is" and there is no mention of the replaced bocage.  Buyer beware!

I am definitely not a fan of FaceBook because I have no interest in the dreary minutiae of others' lives. However, mystaffordshirefigures.com is on FaceBook, and from time to time I and others post things we find interesting on the mystaffordshirefigures group page. I posted the problem cow discussed here last week but thought it worthy of rehashing in detail here. Please join the group if you "do" FaceBook. You will find NO pictures of children, favorites plates of food, and the other clutter associated with  personal FaceBook pages.

What do these three figures of gentlemen have in common? A hint: you don't have to know anything about Staffordshire figures to get the answer.

Well, as you've probably deduced, the figures all have facial hair. Robin Crusoe, the third figure, of course couldn't shave while marooned on his dessert island, so a beard and moustache seem appropriate here. And we expect William Shakespeare and Sir Anthony van Dyck to have facial hair because in their centuries, facial hair was fashionable and suggestive of virility and masculinity. 

Pearlware figures with beards or moustaches generally depict gentlemen from bygone centuries, but figures portraying everyday people of the early 1800s don't have facial hair. The reason is that from the 1700s till about 1850, facial hair was a no-no.  A clean-shaven "open" face symbolized an open mind----the quintessential ingredient for an enlightened gentleman.  The invention of cast steel in the mid-1700s vastly improved razor blades, and new shaving gear prolipherated--all of which made shaving easier. And of course Georgian gentlemen were very into pampering themselves--remember the dandies of that era? 

Among the tens of thousands of Staffordshire figures of everyday folk that I have examined, I can recall but two portraying men with facial hair. Both were made by the "Sherratt" pot bank and both have moustaches!  

I have seen both these figures without mustaches, so I think that a painter was simply having some fun! Of course, things sometimes went wrong in painting, as we see from the Walton cherub with eyelashes above her eye brows

or this bawdy bar maid with her lips painted onto the middle of her chin,

but I think the moustaches on the two little "Sherratt" figures were some long-dead painter's idea of fun. He must have smiled as he completed each stroke, and I smile today as I look at them. How wonderful when humor crosses the centuries!

As for facial hair, it rebounded into fashion in full swing in the second half of the nineteenth century. This gives me comfort. Surely the taste for minimalistic interiors too will die, and antiques will come back into vogue!

I expend much effort cautioning buyers, but I am increasingly aware of the need to caution sellers. What do you do when you must sell? And what happens to our collections at the end of our day? Although I am not planning to check out too soon, I fret about the ultimate disposal of my figures. NOT helpful was my son's reassurance that he has a perfect plan: a part-time assistant at $15 an hour will eliminate the nuisance of disposing of my collection. Hearing his words, I shuddered and understood why people leave collections to museums....but don't you dare!  I can just imagine someone from a Los Angeles homeless shelter, someone who thinks their are three "Fs" in "Staffordshire," disposing of my treasures. Horrors!

Of course, most of us plan on being dead when our figures go back on the market, so what does it really matter?  For me, its not about the money. Rather, I want my figures to be treated respectfully. I hate the way auction houses lump fine figures in with some junk--or several fine figures together--to help move things along. And I have noted that condition reports at auction can either be off-puttingly thorough (noting irrelevant details) or off-puttingly scant. 

Case in point is the 14" pearlware vase with shepherds (below) that came up at auction late last year. I must admit that I gasped when I saw this group. I have never seen another like it.

The auction vase-with-shepherds is enameled in a palette that is typical of the late eighteenth century. I think it was made by Ralph Wood--the enameling and modeling fit the bill, and the figure molds are derived from those used for the Ralph Wood group alongside.

I hope the former owner of this stunningly beautiful shepherds vase is dead so he/she did not have to witness the humiliation this amazing pearlware treasure suffered at auction. First, the estimate was low, low, low...around $150 as best I recall.  Second, the condition report suggested that nobody really wanted to write a detailed report---the very information for which we buyers pay a huge buyer's premium. The lot description noted "Various restorations and repairs"... that was it!   The "full" condition report was no more illuminating. In its entirety, it read "Piece has restoration repair and losses throughout."  The report plus the estimate suggested to me that the group had just been dismissed as junk, and nobody wanted to bother with it.  

To cut a long story short, I bought this group for $300 on the hammer and I am over the moon with it. Yes, the handles have been restored (this I could see before I bid), but the group is structurally intact. There have been no major breaks through the body or base. The shepherdess has a new outer hand and staff, the animals have the odd replacement ear or two, and the shepherd's hand has been reattached. Restoration of this sort can be expected on a group like this, and I should think that any dealer would be honored to have this fine, early example of the potter's skill in stock. 

So what's to be learned from this? Make sure that whoever handles your affairs at the end of your days knows which auction house to approach--or, better yet, which dealer. None of us lives forever, but, with care, our figures do. Let's make sure they are passed on with the respect they deserve.


PS: If you are wanting to sell a figure now.... 
advertise it on the Staffordshire Figure Association's FOR SALE page. This new service is in its infancy, but the SFA hopes it will grow. For your annual membership fee, you can list three figures at a time. I listed a book last week...and it sold. 

The New York Ceramics Fair has become the New York Ceramics and Glass Fair, with, sadly, an increased emphasis on modern stuff that I find quite irrelevant. None the less, we ceramics addicts will wade through anything to get to what we want, and those who attend this gathering January 21-25 will find familiar dealer faces.  Sadly missed will be John Howard, who now brings his dazzling display to NY each October for the International Antiques Show. An exciting addition to the dealer roster is Robert Walker, who will have some important early figures, including the stunning DEATH OF MUNROW group shown on the fair brochure.  Details...well, read it all for yourself below or click here to go to the show's site.

Hot off the press...or more likely hot off a slow boat from China...are Volumes 3 and 4 of Staffordshire Figures 1780-1840. My order from Schiffer has just arrived, so if you have placed a pre-order, expect your books soon. If you want to buy these books in combination with People, Passions, Pastimes and Pleasure, I am offering them at roughly cost on hotlanepress.com....while my supplies last.

The Staffordshire Figure Association has a lovely new web site to celebrate both its growth and its ambitions! Check it out at staffordshirefigureassociation.com. In addition to all else, note that members are now able to offer figures for sale on this site.

Ten years ago, I knew a lot less about early figures than I know now.  One thing that time has taught me is that pearlware figures I have always thought of as common and readily available are frequently quite uncommon. Back in those days, my exposure to the collections of others perhaps spoiled me. In 2004, I photographed this little pair of gardeners marked SALT in the home of Griselda Lewis. 

Very nice, I thought.  I should get a pair....but I am still waiting! I have yet to find another good pair of gardeners marked SALT. I am not saying I haven't seen another pair in the past ten years.....but if I have, they were not worth remembering.  That same year, I photographed this pair of gardeners in the collection of my friend Nick Burton.

Yes, I know his arm is missing, but when all else is original and quite splendid, who cares? This pair can be attributed to the pot bank dubbed "Tunstall". Again, I admired them and started watching out for a similar pair....and I am still looking!

That's not to say my quest for a pair of gardeners has been totally futile, but it certainly has not been easy. I did finally buy this little pair at auction in Canada---not a simple process, but that's what it took to add a pair of gardeners to my shelf.

The dearth of good pairs of gardeners hasn't stopped me from buying fine unusual single figures, like the two lovely ladies below.

This lady gardener (attributed to the Patriotic Group pot bank) has gilded shoes and a feather. She is a firm favorite in my collection....but I have yet to see the male gardener that I am sure was made to accompany her.

I bought the lady gardener in the pair below for my "academic shelf" because I had not seen her bocage form before. A few years later, I got lucky when I found the gentleman gardener who completes the pair. Making up good pairs in this manner is so sweet!

If you aspire to a grand collection, don't turn your nose up at good examples of "ordinary" subjects. As I have learned, they can be even harder to find than their more impressive brethren,