In Britain

Very few earthenware figures were produced in Britain - or elsewhere in Europe - before about 1700, but early to mid- 18th-century white, salt-glazed stoneware pieces are now among the most sought-after items of ceramic art. Some are freestanding and single, while others are grouped on a pew. Pew-groups in good condition rarely fetch less than £60, 000.

Staffordshire potter John Astbury worked in lead-glazed earthenware in the early 18th century. His figures of Scottish bagpipers, mounted dragoons or a party taking tea generally change hands for between £5000 and £30,000. Astbury-type productions from the mid-18th century are covered in splashed green, yellow and manganese-purple glazes: a Chinese boy on a buffalo or an English dovecote may fetch up to £25,000.

In the same tradition are the often superb creamware figures and groups made during the late 18th and early r9th centuries and attributed to the Wood family. They include music- makers, shepherdesses and rustic swains, Falstaffs, Neptunes and other gods and goddesses, and can be recognised by the splashed and transparent colours that leave large parts of the figure glazed but uncoloured. These items can fetch £800-£5000, while later creamware pieces of 1790-1810 are cheaper. These were produced to a lower standard, since the British porcelain factories were now catering for the top end of the market. They feature more enamel colour, with less emphasis on good modelling. Some deal with subjects relating to the Napoleonic wars: they fetch £200-£2000.

Antique Collector Magazine

Highly coloured Staffordshire pearlware figures and groups of the 1820s feature pairs of small children, fashionable dandies or naively modelled animals, most standing before a flattened tree. Prices range from £100 to £4000 a pair — or, if the subject matter is highly amusing, £5000 up to £25,000.

By the mid- r9th century, this tradition had evolved into Staffordshire ‘flatbacks’. These are one-sided models, figures or groups slip- cast in a very small number of parts, then assembled, coloured by a” team of children and sold for just a few pence each, Victorian celebrities, from murderers to royalty, are identified by an embossed.or script title on the oval base. Depending the subject’s rarity, popularity and quality colouring, they sell for £100-£2000 apiece Other untitled pastoral figures, groups an animals range from £50 to £1000.

PORCELAIN, PARIAN AND CHINA

The early British porcelain factories at Bow, Chelsea, Longton Hall and Derby were established between 1745 and 1755, and produced up-market pieces in the temperamental soft,paste porcelain. Figures from the 1750s and 60s are desirable for their charm and artistic appeal rather than their technical excellence, and many were copied directly from Meissen and Sevres pieces.

`Home-made’ designs include Bow figures of Thames watermen, which can cost up to £6000 tody, and portraits of actresses or celebrities which fetch £2000-£12,000. A pair of late Rococo Chelsea figures, each standing before a leafy tree on a gilt-trimmed base, fetches £800-£2.000. Each piece may have one or two candlesticks incorporated. Statues, groups and busts were made in Parian porcelain (similar in texture to marble) by Copeland, Worcester, Minton and others from the 1840s onwards. These are much larger than earlier porcelain figures — generally 12-18 in (30-46 cm) high — and are marble- white and unglazed. The modelling is often superb. Depending on a piece’s size, subject and crispness of cast, Parian figures fetch between £200 and £2,000.

Porcelain figures produced at the Royal Worcester factory from the late 1860s onwards include pairs of figures, figure groups and especially children dressed in contemporary and fashionable ‘Aesthetic’ attire. They were cast in a dense, ivory-coloured body characteristic of Worcester and delicately coloured and gilded. They now change hands for £400-£2000. Worcester’s larger figures of the same period — some in Classical style, others Oriental — are enamelled in flushed pale peach and ivory tones with gilt line borders and can make £2000-£4000. More recently, early 20th-century bone china figures were made by the Staffordshire branch of the Doulton factory. These figures— of theatrical performers, of prim bathing beauties and of Cockney characters, among others — are usually very well enamelled and currently fetch £150-£2500 for examples dating from before the Second World War.

Other figures from this century use many of the subjects and styles of earlier potters, with the addition of striking Art Deco designs and such well-known 20th-century phenomena as Walt Disney’s cartoon characters.

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Ceramic Figures and Collectible Decor part 3