FEW of us nowadays have room to install a picture gallery—at all events a conventional one with paintings or drawings on the walls. But what about a picture gallery on china, a collection of plates, dishes,cups, tureens, teapots, etc. all of which have been painted or printed with attractive pictures.

This is another of those subjects where we ought to have a look at our arrangement first—for this will determine what we will be able to collect. To do the job properly we shall need both shelves and walls, and possibly also a drawer for quite small things. These facilities should all be together, so that the collection can be shown off at the same time. So what we seem to need is either that alcove again or a corner of a room fitted with shelves.

For the walls above and around the shelves there are the many painted plaques and plates specially made for display. The Victorian age was rich in these things, and there is an endless variety to choose from, at all prices from shillings to many pounds. Factories like Mintons, Copelands, Davenport, etc. put their best artists on to the work, and some pieces have now found their way into the museums.

Antique Collector MagazineFor the shelves we shall obviously look out such pieces as flower and spill vases, cups and saucers, dishes, sucriers, perhaps small ewers, jugs and other items which stand up on their own or hang from hooks. The drawers will take quite small items, like toy plates, boxes, potlids, etc.

Now what to collect. If we simply look for pictures on china we shall fill our corner in no time at all, but it will be a haphazard gathering rather than a collection. What we will be better advised to do is to be strong-minded and specialise quite firmly in some subject or style.

Take flower paintings, for example. A collection of these could grow into a treasury of styles over two centuries or more. There are the early stylised blooms, mostly copied from Dresden or Sevres : there are the much more naturalistic methods used at Derby and Worcester, there are the botanical styles favoured at Swansea and Chelsea. Of course, these porcelains and chinas are pretty expensive now, but as we have so often said in this book, if you don’t mind a crack or a chip—and after all it is the picture you are interested in—you may come across some pieces quite cheaply.

Painters on porcelain have generally been fond of doing birds and butterflies and insects. In the early days they found it handy to place a bee on a place where there was a flaw, so as to disguise it from the fussy buyer. Horses, dogs, cows all appear in these pictures, and here is where the collector with an interest in breeding could get together a most instructive collection.

Landscapes, of course, abound, as they do in any department of painting in this country. Sometimes these are fantastic never-never land pictures inspired by Chinese porcelain or romantic ideas of places in Italy, sometimes they record actual views of places, most of which have long since altered out of all recognition.

Another fruitful field is to be found in portraits of groups of children sitting on their mother’s knee or playing at their games. Never were domestic instincts so strong as in Victorian days, and some charming little vignettes of family life in those times have been painted on porcelain and china.

Apart from painting by hand there are plates and other table wares which have been colour printed with the same sort of pictures you find on pot lids, often with a relief border. These were made by many potters, but the originators were Felix Pratt and Sons, of Fenton, which gives the name of “Prattware” to these wares. The subjects cover a very wide range, from views to groups of people or portraits, and there is a book giving the titles and origin of many of the pictures.

I would also look out for all those pleasant views printed on what is sometimes called souvenir china, that is to say, pieces bought while on holiday, and brought back as mementoes. These include many families of mugs, one of which, although of German china, has printed views of places all over England, some of them very charming. Often these pictures are taken from mid-Victorian prints, and give us an idea of what the places looked like in those days. I have never been to Llanwrtyd, so I don’t know if the bridge there still looks as it did when the cup and saucer on the back cover were printed.

I also like to find pieces with pictures of ladies in bustles and gentlemen in top hats walking sedately along the front at Brighton or Hastings: these are often framed in a pink border decorated with gold.

So here you have every sort of china to collect, from the choicest and most expensive to the cheapest memento of some long-vanished fairground: you can choose between pounds and shillings. If you choose carefully, both kinds will grow steadily in value.

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