LEMONS,FAKES & GENERAL MISTAKES

Very useful information.

Isn't it meant to have an 'S' on the end of Fielding?

You're right TC. Didn't notice that difference in the book.

Pottery of this type was very common at my local auction, one dealer who is also a friend of the auctioneer used to bring it up from Stoke for every sale. After they'd done people with the Dorothy Anne pots, they moved onto Lorna Bailey.

Are you from the north of England as I suspect there's quite a lot floating around up here?

Thanks rob s Yes north lincs will keep them

Stamford auctions had a 'Poole studio' vase on their latest catalogue - lot 167 - with a fake backstamp. I pointed this out to them and the listing now states 'Poole style' vase. Why didn't they just remove it from the auction instead of allowing fakes to continue to circulate. Maybe if more people complain about it they will remove it completely.

Disgraceful

This carved wooden figurine was sold at a local auction house as a Willi Soukop for £1000, even though I told them it was Balinese like mine below it.

I like to have a scan through ebay every now and then just to see if there might be anything of interest or if I want to laugh at some of the prices and descriptions. Today I came across 2 Poole fakes in just a few minutes. Have a look for the 'poole pottery cat jug' - 4 days to go, and the 2 brown and cream vases - 3 days to go.

I messaged a seller with Kernow in their user name last year about fake Poole sales. I wonder if it was the brown and cream vase seller?

Probably, user name is maidofkernow. They have replied to my message and saying they couldn't be fakes or they wouldn't have bought them !! But they are going to remove them from sale to check with Poole pottery. Not sure how much of that to believe but I won't waste my time replying and getting into countless to and fro messaging.

It seems that there are many more cowboys on Ebay than usual. No doubt all that lockdown spare time everyone has. One never knows whether it is deliberate  or just ignorance/stupidity. Years ago I used to bother with a polite message, but its just bashing your head against a brick wall really!
            As for prices!  There do seem to have gone up a lot lately. The chancers rather than the rogues. Even so, some people are paying those prices.... A fool and their money....

I stopped looking like you, philpot, but I thought that I would just check Alan Wallwork items on there after your remarks.

There are two garish AW fakes on there for sale at the moment and in the sold list a few that clearly are not Wallworks but sold as such. One sold by an auction house "Modern Design & Studio Ceramics Consultant Specialist" no less.

The one with the 'Part of the Alan Wallwork archive' with an impressed W. Seems to have gone for a substantial price
Then the sorta vaguely 'school of Alan Wallwork' with prices in the hundreds of pounds, with no actual mark.
Did Alan ever do anything in a reddish all over glaze? Couple on Ebay that look reasonably Vaguely Wallwork looked slightly convincing. But with a red glaze? mmmmm....

The ones with the red glaze are fakes. If Alan was still around I suspect that he would have sent rather abusive messages to the sellers, which he often did. I know that he even got onto eBay on occasions but they didn't want to know.

I remember once that he wrote to a seller suggesting that the AW was more likely to be Amy Winehouse than him. The seller's response was to add to his listing that some crank had suggested that it was by Amy Winehouse. Failing to mention that the person he called a "crank" was Alan, himself.

The bowl with the W is Alan's early work - he gave me a couple of tenmoku glazed vases with that mark to sell for him in the dim and distant passed. I can't remember if they got bought or binned but they really are of no more value than a bowl or vase with an unidentified W mark.

Well the Red glaze one sold for over £140, and another slightly strange looking one for over £300. Both with only limited bidding, which is unusual for Wallwork top items. Caveat Emptor on Ebay at the moment seems to be a wise the policy for buyers to take sometimes.

I noticed that myself and thought that it was a shame that one couldn't post an image of the item that we are talking about.

So I took a photograph of my computer screen.


I have often wondered if the screen is really a HP Pavilion 23cw or not.

yes the screen looks legit'

Not Ebay alone as well. That well known man of a million unsigned pots dear ol' Shoji Hamada......From Stourbridge auctioneers Fieldings
https://fieldingsauctioneers.co.uk/auctions/184

Apparently the provenance is from a lady who was the chief Sales assistant for the well known Bernard Leach pottery shop in Kensington Church Street in 1970's London....Indeed! Fieldings are quite a reputable auction house, who especially have very good modern glass sales. So you should really expect them to know better. Its not only the chancers and fraudsters you have to be careful of, its the incompetents as well

I'm amazed how many people on Ebay, Etsy etc are selling items that are obviously misrepresented. I've just bought a figurine which was made in England, but which was advertised as an 'Inuit Carving'! And I've also seen a brooch advertised for sale as dating from the 1960s...which is kind of accurate in that the maker was born in 1960, but you can buy an identical brooch, brand new for half the price of the 'very rare vintage' one!

I have no expertise at all (just like pre-loved/vintage items) and I'm also not very tech savvy, yet I managed to spot the flaws in both descriptions with just a few minutes of internet searching.

Since my lack of knowledge would make me an easy target for fakes, I follow my father's rule for buying - if you love it and are happy to pay that price to have it on your wall/display shelf, you can never be cheated!

there's an ebayer who's named after the infamous robber Jesse James, recently he listed a rather nasty bowl as 'Geoffrey Swindell?'.
I told him it was not made by Swindell, to which he replied 'Yes I know it isn't, I just put that on the listing to sell it'

I have listed items as “Alan Caiger Smith’s Aldermaston Pottery”, which is technically accurate but it attracts the buyers thinking it’s by ACS himself
But the advantage of mislabelled items is you can find bargains if you know what the item really is.

dantheman wrote:there's an ebayer who's named after the infamous robber Jesse James, recently he listed a rather nasty bowl as 'Geoffrey Swindell?'.
I told him it was not made by Swindell, to which he replied 'Yes I know it isn't, I just put that on the listing to sell it'

I'd assumed the wrong descriptions were genuine mistakes, but perhaps not!

I know one seller that doesn’t include the potter/pottery name if it’s one that doesn’t sell well, because they get more buyers willing to take a punt on an unidentified piece in case it’s a good name,

studio-pots wrote:So I took a photograph of my computer screen.

I have often wondered if the screen is really a HP Pavilion 23cw or not.

Taking this one step further, the garish thing or one from the same source that just happened to be on my computer screen in the summer when I took the photograph above, sold in the recent Adam Partridge Studio Ceramics & Modern Design sale as being by Alan Wallwork.

Not for as much as on eBay but it does mean that sellers, who have no intention to deceive, have what is regarded as a legitimate reason to list something as being by someone when it is not.