Marked v’s Unmarked pottery

For the start of the discussion see here -

https://www.20thcenturyforum.com/t22548-poole-living-glaze



That seems a little extreme to me. If you love someones pots, whether they are working for Moorcroft, Poole...... whoever, why stop just because they leave the factory.
Then again, I am being a little one eyed I guess, if something looks beautiful to me then I do not really care who made it, I just want it. And I can remember a time when I was a little narrower in my tastes & collection.
Different strokes for different folks.

If it’s cheap as chips and you know it’s Poole then, sure, it’ll sell. But not as much as for a fully marked piece

in this case a fully marked piece might sell for a tenner so the missing stamp won't hurt it too much

The question of marks and collecting is worthy of a whole book in itself. Its all down to value of course, as you say Dan. Serious collectors pay serious money, and a mark is essential for that. It is an imprimatur of reassurance, a guarantee of provenance. As to why collectors collect, and pay high money for stuff that is essentially worthless (even gold, diamonds) in its basic state. You would need a whole library on human psychology!

people who demand marks on indisputable pots exasperate me but then again I can buy their rejects for half price so I hope they never change

The Key word there Dan is 'Indisputable'. If there is no mark/signature on a piece, then the 'indisputable' part of it is entirely the judgement of the seller. There are precious few Ebay sellers whose 'indistutable' judgement I would trust to pay decent money for anything!

I think that marked or unmarked, there is no better time to buy pottery, everything is as cheap as chips at the moment. Great for hoarders like me, not so good for poor folk trying to make a living.

I think it’s different for studio pottery where you can be 99.99% certain an unmarked piece is by a particular potter based on the style and clay and decoration. But on production ware there will always be the niggling doubt, or belief that even if it is by that factory then it must be unmarked because it’s a glaze test or a second.

Production ware.
The market for all of it is very weak at the moment. and has been for some time. That sentence is probably an understatement. So you can get really nice stuff at a Boot Sale very cheaply. Even pretty decent 'marked stuff'. So its the difference between paying 50p or a couple of quid, and perhaps paying 10 quid or slightly more. The return might be a lot more for the better stuff.
As for Studio. Sorry to disagree with you Naomi. Ebay is the Wild West. Most Sellers attribute all over the place, and they are totally wrong. They are guessing because they no nothing about the subject. 99.9% sure? mmmmm......!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
As for unmarked studio outside Ebay. It is totally dead in the water.

most of the studio I collect could be identified from 50 yards away so marks are only good for dating the pots

Aldermaston pottery?
Leach anglo- oriental style?
Winchcombe pottery?
St Ives Individual pieces?
You would need to be a genuine wizard to identify individuals from those at 50 yards.
Mind you.
You must have incredible vision for your age Dan!

I agree, ref' ebay is like the wild west. People do seem to stick names to pots which are blatantly not by the same person.
I have mistakenly done it myself, but removed the item in question as soon as I was aware of my error.
There are some really good sellers on there, as well as the cowboys, but you have to be careful and I just cannot be bothered with buying, too risky. The only thing I am relaxed about buying on there is some packaging material.
My ex partner once purchased a Moorcroft plate from a seller (going back a few years now) and it arrived in a jiffy bag. Remarkable really that it was not broken. When she questioned him about it he replied "well you got it ok". People that sell and couldn't give a monkeys whether you get the item safely or not, never mind whether it is the right item or not.
If I sell something I pack it to withstand a nuclear fallout, to have something arrive broken is just down to out & out laziness, or they cannot be bothered to spend a few pounds on decent packaging.
At the end of the day, there is nothing like having something in your hand, looking it over properly ...... whether that be at a fair, car boot, auction, charity shop......

The 'few pounds on decent packaging' comes out of their bottom line of course. This of course is where Ebay suffers in its permanent pursuit for the cheapest dregs ends of the bottom. Quality costs money. In packaging as well as anything else on Ebay. You get what you pay for.

With the majority I would agree, but I end up losing a very large chunk of change (on postage) every time I sell something, purely because I will not be responsible for something getting broken.
I think if you love & respect something, going from the piece that someone crafted and produced (at a fair cost), to the person(s) that have kept it in good order for however long...... to the point I own & enjoy it, then sell it...... The responsibility is on me to preserve that item, call it Karma or whatever, but we are the keepers of beautiful things that deserve as much respect when we move them on to someone else as when we are looking after them for ourselves.

philpot wrote:Aldermaston pottery?
Leach anglo- oriental style?
Winchcombe pottery?
St Ives Individual pieces?
You would need to be a genuine wizard to identify individuals  from those  at 50 yards.
Mind you.
You must have incredible vision for your age Dan!

I did say the pots I collect can be spotted from 50 yards Phil, I almost added that collectors of brown Leachy pottery might struggle

Dam m'dear.
Did I actually read the phrase 'BROWN POTS'??????
The Leach contingent will have you hung drawn and quartered for that Phrase!
Righty then.
Ruthanne Tudball. Would you collect an unmarked piece by her?
Never mindy of course, that without Leach there never would have been any of her pottery...
Come to think of it. Most of her pottery is BROWN!

For Studio I’m talking about collectors rather than the type of eBay sellers who could spot a particular make of shoe from 50 paces than be able to tell Studio from production ware.
But no collector is going to mistake a Ruthanne Tudball for a Lisa Hammond from 100 paces, mark or no.

But would you buy an unmarked pot attributed to either of them?
Both do mostly brown pottery!

If you ever have any unmarked pots by either of them I’ll be sure to give you a good deal on them
But, seriously, yes I treat them the same as a marked one. You wouldn’t expect to pay a fiver for a Hamada vase, or a Svend Bayer jug, just because it didn’t have a mark. But where it’s a larger pottery with a lot of apprentices, like  Winchcombe and Leach St Ives, then, yes, a potter’s personal stamp will make it more valuable than just having the pottery’s stamp or no stamp. But I’ve sold Winchcombe standard ware for the same price with or without the pottery mark.

'A Hamada vase'....
Now surely there is a classic case in point.
If all the 'Hamada' pots on sale were his, then he must have potted for a 1000 years.
I've bought all of the Leach potters across the board.
But 'Hamada'??????? No way!
A name whose reputation has been trashed because his pieces are not marked.

philpot wrote:Dam m'dear.
Did I actually read the phrase 'BROWN POTS'??????
The Leach contingent will have you hung drawn and quartered for that Phrase!
Righty then.
Ruthanne Tudball. Would you collect an unmarked piece by her?
Never mindy of course, that without Leach there never would have been any of her pottery...
Come to think of it. Most of her pottery is BROWN!

Don't think my RT pieces have much brown.
BL criticsed Cook of Amblesideside for using Blue (Chemical) glazes way back. As though all studio potters should
be forced to use only naturally produced ones.

'Most'!

philpot wrote:Aldermaston pottery?
Leach anglo- oriental style?
Winchcombe pottery?
St Ives Individual pieces?
You would need to be a genuine wizard to identify individuals  from those  at 50 yards.
Mind you.
You must have incredible vision for your age Dan!

Even I could ID most of the potters Dan actually collects, at 50 yards with my glasses off and I'm quite short-sighted!

Loads of potters make would that is easily identifiable without being marked and I would be happy to buy them.

On the other hand I would not pay high for any BL pot, marked or otherwise, as the market is/is going to be flooded with fakes soon. There are a lot of very convincing examples currently being made in Japan.

Buy them.
But at what price?
Is a unmarked piece worth as much as a marked one?
In the art market in general a signed piece is worth a lot more than an unsigned one?

A studio potter’s stamp is just free marketing, and is only really useful for sorting out the harder to ID ones who are basically copying Leach, or are still at the student stage. So, yes, unmarked pots are worth the same as their  marked siblings