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.
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!
(c) Bonhams 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!
