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Extract from the March 2010 Magazine
March 2010 Magazine Pages 12-13 THE MARKET FOR
19TH CENTURY
BRITISH PORCELAIN
by Jeremy Lamond
This is a good time to buy 19th century British porcelain. Many of the major Victorian factories are cheap at present compared to the situation ten years ago and the price revision is due to a number of factors. Looming large over the market since regular use began in the late 1990s is the internet which has helped to expand supply in all areas. This has led to a general levelling off of prices as customer demand has been satisfied with 24/7 availability and has shown that 'uncommon' pieces are probably a lot more prevalent than at first thought.
Great names to 19th century ears such as Coalport, Minton, Worcester and Derby have all seen a steady settling of prices over the last ten years with collectors beginning to concentrate on the rare or exceptional.
Fashion is a significant dictator of value and, at auction, Victorian 'fussy' porcelain shapes and frills appear to have been passed over for more minimalist 1930s shapes so that tea and dinner wares from the 19th century can now be bought for comparatively modest prices. The present trend towards kitchen suppers, ready meals and fast foods has meant that there is now little practical use for many Victorian porcelain dinner services, and afternoon tea is a 'time' luxury scarcely anybody can afford. As families 'downsize' and 'de-clutter', driven ever onwards by lunchtime auction programmes and saleroom temptations, the future for display and table china of 100 years ago may look bleak in financial terms. However, fashions change and as Mark Twain said about land 'they are not making it anymore'.

March 2010 Magazine P15These Coalport Chicago Exhibition plates from 1893, which sold for £780, shoe that exhibition standard 19th century porcelain can be bought for modest sums.

There were some truly astonishing prices paid at auction for 19th century porcelain last year topped perhaps by the £78,000 tendered at Bonhams, London, on 8th April for a Swansea Nantgarw ice pail circa 1818-20 decorated by Thomas Pardoe. This was from the Ann and June Kieft Collection and was illustrated in W.D. John's book The Pottery and Porcelain of Swansea and Nantgarw, plate CLXXIXC. The catalogue stated that this was one of only a small number of similar ice pails recorded and it is easy to see why the wonderful floral painting of Thomas Pardoe attracts such a premium on top of an already rare shape. In the same sale, a Nantgarw dish, again painted by Pardoe, realised £5,040 and a cabinet cup and saucer in Empire style by him took £5,400. Later in the year, the hunger for Nantgarw was undiminished when Dreweatt Neate sold a pair of ice pails and covers from the Cardiff Castle service and probably decorated by Thomas Pardoe. Estimated at £30,000-£40,000, and with direct provenance to the Marquess of Bute in 1943, they sold on 20th October for £69,600.
Away from the hothouse atmosphere of top flight Welsh porcelains, now is a good time to buy table and decorative wares from some of the great names of 19th century porcelain. Coalport, for instance, does not seem to be wildly more expensive than it was in the 1980s. In September 2009 Cheffins of Cambridge offered a dinner service of some 117 pieces which had been bought at the Sherringham Hall sale in October 1986 for £1,600. Although the service had suffered some damage, the 23-year gap between the sales only managed to add £600 to the hammer price and it sold for £2,640. As an investment, therefore, this showed a very mediocre return although at least better than the auctioneers' predictions of £300-£500.
In March, Halls Fine Art sold six Coalport Chicago 1893 Exhibition plates in pattern 2747 painted with ornithological subjects for £780. This was a relatively modest price for exhibition ceramics and the trend continued when the same auction house offered a Shrewsbury Flower Show 1924 exhibition prize, one of only ten made, in December. Despite having a restored finial, the vase was still inexpensive at £1,800 considering its rarity.