One of my favorite books is John Hall's Staffordshire Portrait Figures. This slim little volume is of no great academic worth, but John Hall's love of figures oozes through the pages. I wish I had known John Hall, but alas he was before my time. BTW, you can pick up the book very inexpensively. Barry Lamb at Referenceworks will get you a copy of this or any other book on ceramics.
All books have errors--a fact authors inevitably learn to their sorrow--and John Hall's book is no exception. Notably, it describes a New Marriage Act just like this one as early, when it is not.
But John Hall's book has left me with a far more vexing question. It illlustrates a crucifixion group, shown from the front only. It looks very like the example below--it probably came from the same potbank because even the bocage leaves are arranged identically. This example, from Andrew Dando's past stock, is unmarked. But Mr. Hall records his example as "John Walton impressed".
Here I have two problems:
- First, WALTON, not JOHN WALTON is the standard form of the Walton mark. Did this figure have some other variation of the Walton mark.....or was Mr. Hall a bit sloppy? Nit-picky you think? These little things start mattering when you are piecing together a research puzzle.
- Second, while I have recorded other examples of the same crucifixion group, I cannot find a single example that is marked WALTON. Collectors and dealers with encyclopedic memories can't recall an example marked WALTON. Old-school dealers tended to use the term "Walton" very loosely, often applying it to figures that simply had a bocage. I am sure that Mr. Hall thought of this figure as being in the Walton style, but he captioned the image as "John Walton impressed."
