dreweatts art auction

This is mostly fine art but with a select number of ceramics including Lucie Rie and a fine collection of pots by John Ward and a good Janet Leach piece. https://auctions.dreweatts.com/auctions/8595/drewea1-10383?

Dreweatt's has one of the most beautiful auction house sites in the country. A Big Old character house with lawns going down to the River Lambourn. An old one as well. It fancied itself as a provinicial Rival to Wooley and Wallis. But never quite succeeded. Their knowledge of studio pottery was not great, and one did get some bargains there.
            The yellow Lucie Rie bowl looks under valued. The 1980 ish vase, looks a bit dull, She was trying to get a swirling winding pattern up the vase ,especially Pink. But found it very challenging. The pink one like this in the V&A is nice, as is the one in Wakefield.
           Is one getting a surfeit of John Wards recently?    The green ones look nice (as they always mostly do) and the black one looks interesting. But the rest seem to be a bit Mwah if one you know what I mean. Are you having a bid at the Janet Leach?

Yes there does appear to be large number of John Ward pots appearing recently and it will be interesting to see what effect this will have on the market if any. It's always interesting to see an actual 'collection' of objects appearing on the market as this often generates more interest, there are a couple of pieces that interest me but i am doubtful that the low reserves are realistic. I will be probably be bidding on the Janet Leach though as i have accumulated a fair number of her pots over the last couple of years and this would fit in quite nicely. We used to visit Dreweatt's often when dealing as this was a fairly straight run from Notting Hill, the silver section was always completely sewn up but we did buy a number of interesting pieces of early pottery.

I suspect the Big Green one with the band around the edges will go for quite a substantial sum. Is huge for Ward at 18in , with an estimate of £7000-£10,000. They are rare that design. One went in Maak back in 2016 at £6,500 at that was only 11 ins high. The Ward Market Prices have risen substantially since them £12,000? £15,000 hammer price?

The ones to watch i think are the 9 inch black and white piece, a similar one recently fetched over £20,000, the flattened pot with green radial design and the large plain white shouldered piece which recently fetched £13,000 although 18 inches is large but not that uncommon for ward, i have one piece at that size. I think most lots will comfortably exceed their estimates (i would be very happy to buy the green radial striped piece if it went within the said estimate ) do you have interest in the Janet leach?

Of all the Leach Potters I Janet Leach was always the one that was most interesting. She tread her on path, and her strands of her work are fascinating. We have some smaller pieces of her work as well as some Bill Marshall.

I agree a most interesting potter and since i took an interest in her work i have manage to collect a good selection of her pots.I am also interested in the character as well as her work as she was part of the St Ives scene, i have managed to talk to an old painter (yes i found someone older than myself )who knew Janet and we had quite a discussion,i am off to St Ives again soon and might even visit the pottery, although we visit St Ives on fairly regular basis we rarely walk up to the pottery.

We lived down in Devon when we started collecting studio pottery. While we visited truro and Penzance a lot(primarily because of the Auctioneers!) but always found St Ives a complete and utter pain to get to. The times we did visit like a wet drizzly January, it was like an eerie ghost town.
Our collecting was much influenced by living in Devon. Dartington in particular had a superb Studio Pottery shop.With a beloved Cranks of old. The Devon Crafts at Bovey Tracey also had a woderful display. So our first pots were John Maltby, Alan Wallwork, Peter Smith, David Leach, Sandy Brown,Svend Bayer, Tim Andrews.

To be honest philpot the main reasons for our St Ives visits are the Tate and the Hepworth garden,the town has lost a lot of its appeal, a number of galleries have gone online only now and much of the art displayed around the town is decidedly average.We never take the car into the town but get the little train at Hayle station which runs along the bay which is a nice little journey.

The large number of John Ward in this sale sold very well. Some substantially above estimate. It was the unsual and almost hypnotic vase with the radiating green stripes that shone though. 14 ins high and it went for a hammer price of £35,000
https://auctions.dreweatts.com/auctions/8595/drewea1-10383/lot-details/0992b805-257c-409d-9551-b01b00fdedca

croker wrote:I agree a most  interesting potter and since i took an interest in her work i have manage to collect a good selection of her pots.I am also interested in the character as well as her work as she was part of the St Ives scene, i have managed to talk to an old painter (yes i found someone older than myself )who knew Janet and we had quite a discussion,i am off to St Ives again soon and might even visit the pottery, although we visit St Ives on fairly regular basis we rarely walk up to the pottery.

I went up to the Pottery for old times sake when I visited St. Ives last month....... it wasn't worth the walk to be honest.

Hi philpot, The sale was a success, i did bid but the green striped piece went beyond what most bidders were expecting , another aspect of the sale which illustrates the importance of condition when buying modern pots was the b/w example which only fetched £2600, along with others i left a pre auction bid on this pot then they amended the condition report to say there was a small chip, all bids then placed were then withdrawn. My point is that an identical pot fetched £24,000 in MAAK's sale,the chip was only minor but it meant a massive reduction in value.

As a matter of interest do you know if the chip was actually in the original Auctioneers condition report? Or was it changed on a viewing day when someone pointed it out? Because with the caveats on auctioneers descriptions, they can often be unreliable!
The Janet Leach piece at £2400 went really well. That must probably one of the highest prices paid for her work.
https://auctions.dreweatts.com/auctions/8595/drewea1-10383/lot-details/b055a70a-70ab-40c4-8a9a-b01b00fe9079

I think it was probably damaged in the viewing as i never saw it when examining the initial pics and the further images sent showed a very clean small chip .I think it was quite a high price for Janet Leach although i have details of another larger pot fetching over £4000, her better pieces seemed to have slowly got more expensive. certain John Ward pots seem to be gathering pace as this was the 4th result over £20,000 recently, i think the price today was a record for him. I never bought any pots today but picked up a nice signed lithograph from Gaze auctions(swings and roundabouts)