Adam Partridge studio ceramics auctions

philpot wrote:Charles Bound has a fairly narrow spectrum of collectors. His style is definitely not a mainstream appeal to the average collector. I think you are right Crawford. That is probably a greater total of Charles Bound stuff than has been on sale in all auctions in the past ten  years or more

I believe that it has all come from Charles himself. He's in his eighties and downsizing!

One wonders if these Partridge auctions are getting too big. Starting at 10am it finished just after 7 pm. Nine hours of auctioneering in which was a fairly moderate sale, bulked out heavily by far too many pieces on Individual potters.
As in auction it probably reflects the market now, Very Pedestrian. Fair amount of unsolds, and most at the bottom or just below estimates. Hardly any large bids for anything. A lot of this stuff will appear on Ebay, Equally you could probably have got better money selling a lot of this on Ebay.
If you had better quality higher priced pieces for auction. You would be thinking very carefully about putting it into a Partridge sale now. The average is burying the stars.

I put an online bid in for a Maltby but I’d already been outbid midweek. Haven’t checked how much it went for

philpot wrote:One wonders if these Partridge auctions are getting too big. Starting at 10am it finished just after 7 pm. Nine hours of auctioneering in which was a fairly moderate sale, bulked out heavily by far too many pieces on Individual potters.
        As in auction it probably reflects the market now, Very Pedestrian. Fair amount of unsolds, and most at the bottom or just below estimates. Hardly any large bids for anything. A lot of this stuff will appear on Ebay, Equally you could probably have got better money selling a lot of this on Ebay.
           If you had better quality higher priced pieces for auction. You would be thinking very carefully about putting it into a Partridge sale now. The average is burying the stars.  

When I started out dealing a sale like this would have seemed like heaven. That was before the internet and so you had to drive there; examine and bid. There you would meet all kinds of dealers - the ones that you knew as real people and others that you knew by their eBay names. It would have been hard work and a very long day or two but you would have been able to buy sufficient at the right price to make it worthwhile and to sell to your customers. Most dealer's customers would have had no idea that the auction was happening and so everything you and other dealers bought appeared "fresh to the market".

I am really glad that I am not starting out as a dealer now, there is too much coming onto the market and it will have been seen by most people that would potentially be interested.

Certainly, if you had any potentially valuable items of studio pottery/ceramics for auction there would be much better options available.

So the auction market (at least for studio) has shifted from the mostly dealers sales to the mostly private buyer sales. Pity the auction houses, laws, descriptions, photography, postage etc have not caught up.

I totally agree with everything that studio has said, like him we worked hard and travelled many miles in a week to visit auctions, with no internet then we relied on the ATG for the weeks auction information ,it was enjoyable and you could make a reasonable living but with the onset of the internet very many dealers went out of business and the antiques shops closed fast. Like studio i think it would be very hard to become a full time dealer these days as the world can now see what's on offer, the auction rooms have basically replaced much of the retail.

I watched most of this sale online and i agree that it could be cut by half to get rid of the dross but from Adam Partridge's point of view it's a money spinner, he takes the pile e'm high view and this is successful for him, i don't think i would like to put a high end piece in for sale because as Philpot points out it can get buried among the also rans and i wouldn't want a tired and impatient auctioneer knocking it out too soon. As for the sale i thought the bidding was very selective on the likes of Wallwork, Maltby etc and although some final prices weren't too bad i think there were less bidders than in the past( which is not a good sign) , the Lucie Rie fluted bowl was surprisingly cheap. I think it's always possible to get a bargain at Partridge's. while on the subject of auctions Bonhams mailed me for consigning ,apparently they are looking to expand the studio ceramics in the Oct sale, they already have some nice Coper.

I've been getting the emails from Bonhams too.

I think the final Nail in the dealers market came with the combination of the iphone in 2007 and the 2008 Financial crash. The iphone and subsequent mobile phones gave everyone a computer/Camera/email/ Social media/ auction bidding platform in their back pocket.
Equally the large auction houses stopped their Studio pottery sales back in 2008. Bonhams will have a long way to go to regain any market traction there. Fond memories of Bonham's Bath sales of 'lesser' studio pottery. There was always bargains to be had there!
Marijke Varrall-Jones of Maak fame was Bonhams studio pottery specialist way back then. She has done a Very Fine of buidling her own Maak platform as the leading specialist studio pottery platform in the UK now.

Bonhams was hit by the banking crisis back in 2008 and prices slumped dramatically with the loss of the US buyers. It hasn't really recovered since then, especially after Brexit with the increased import/export costs.

philpot wrote: Fond memories of Bonham's Bath sales of 'lesser' studio pottery. There was always bargains to be had there!

That was one of the places that I was reminiscing about when writing about the "early auction days".

https://auctions.adampartridge.co.uk/auction/details/0324-studio-ceramics-macclesfield/?au=32

Well here is the latest one. 23 October. 613 Lots of Bread and Butter stuff. If you want to build a collection, this the place to come! Not many highlights. Two John Ward, a few emmanuel cooper. Estimates seem quite low, and its another attention wandering whopper of a sale!

I was in the room for yesterday's AP sale. A pretty horrid trip up from Oxfordshire in torrential wind and rain (and then similar on the way back), but I was determined to go. As Philpot said above, definitely a sale to build a collection (which is what I'm doing) and I managed to get a good haul: Malone, Bound, Collins, Ford, Swanson, Plumptre and Phethean.

Like former AP sales there was a large amount of Jim Malone, and some catalogued as coming from his last firing at Lessonhall. Is it safe to assume most of it is probably consigned by him? Prices rising a tad for him but lots of well known names going for below estimate with the feeling that AP wants them gone... Mercifully most of the sale went by at quite a lick.

Ed

Good choices. I was tempted to but some Charles Bound at the previous sale which was for charity, but they got good prices; over my budget

The two John Ward did not sell though. One wonders if he is reaching his high point in value. the green line one did a very hefty estimate of £4000-£6000 and did nit get it.

NaomiM wrote:Good choices. I was tempted to but some Charles Bound at the previous sale which was for charity, but they got good prices; over my budget

Like Jim Malone, Charles Bound is having a clearout/downsizing and I wouldn't be very surprised if there won't be a good selection of Charles's work in the next sale and the next and the.........

Hi Philpot, The John Ward pots were very unlikely to sell and i was surprised that Adam Partridge accepted them with such high estimates, sorry to correct you but the green striped pot had £6000-£8000 as an estimate but this type has never fetched more than £3,800 and one example was sold recently (possibly the same piece), the other green pot was visibly cracked. I found the sale very flat and if anyone had wished to stock up on Dodd, Malone, Rogers etc then this was the sale for them as prices were very low for this type of pottery.

Thanks Croker, that will teach me to do it off the top of my head!  It makes an interesting debate as to where the Leach school is going now. One might well argue that there has just been too much quanity of it in the Partridge sales.
            On t'other hand the collecting market for Leach style work is now three generations old. Who is going to collect it in the future?
             There were quite a few Wallwork and Maltby in this sale, and they seemed to be holding their prices up well.
              Have you seen the Henderson pieces for auction coming up in Germany? They look tasty! Some lovely Rie there  as well  Just made me think of when we had so much more cross culture fertilisation with Europe. Sad to say, those times have gone...  

I have seen the German sale and there are some nice pieces, i particularly like the Ruth Duckworth's, the Henderson with the foot print is strange and i am not sure what his intention was with this piece. Because of all the charges now associated with buying in Europe i tend to view but no longer buy. I believe Henderson is quite popular in Germany.

I was outbid on all the Swindell but managed to get 3 lots of Ruthanne Tudball. I just hope they are willing to pack and post them to me in Lincolnshire. otherwise I'll be paying 50% more than hammer price using the expensive shippers

dantheman wrote:I was outbid on all the Swindell but managed to get 3 lots of Ruthanne Tudball. I just hope they are willing to pack and post them to me in Lincolnshire. otherwise I'll be paying 50% more than hammer price using the expensive shippers

Ah! I was after her blue yunomi - I thought that was lovely. Did you get it?

Yes £45

The latest sale at Partridge auctions is now online, billed as the Michael Dayabandhu collection it is in fact only the remaining part of the collection, the best pieces were auctioned at MAAK in may 2020. All the pieces in the collection around 1200 in all were apparently housed in a small flat. Most lots have low estimates and i am not sure if there are any reserves. the sale is on the 5th /Jan/ 2024.

croker wrote:The latest sale at Partridge auctions is now online, billed as the Michael Dayabandhu collection it is in fact only the remaining part of the collection, the best pieces were auctioned at MAAK in may 2020. All the pieces in the collection around 1200 in all were apparently housed in a small flat. Most lots have low estimates and i am not sure if there are any reserves. the sale is on the 5th /Jan/ 2024.

He was a customer of mine but did buy extensively. I did visit the ex-Council flat a couple of times before his illness and it was absolutely rammed. His first pottery interest was Doulton and earlier stoneware before getting the studio pottery collecting bug.

https://auctions.adampartridge.co.uk/auction/details/1001-studio-ceramics-art-pottery--paintings-from-the-michael-evansdayabandhu-collection-macclesfield/?au=63

Just been browsing this collection. What you might call a superb chance for the ordinary collector. A very wide range of pieces which is a pretty full selection of the mid market in studio pottery. If I had the space there is a lot of stuff there that make me excited.
Okay, so the best stuff has gone. But then, for most collectors the 'Best' is beyond their means. One suspects this will attract a lot of everyday interest. It will also be an interesting
test of the present bread and butter market. market.
However did he fit all this lot + the Maak stuff, into a small council flat?