WOOLLEY AND WALLIS STUDIO POTTERY & Design sale

https://www.woolleyandwallis.co.uk/departments/20th-century-design/da301122-2/?p=1&s=160&v=list
December 1 in Salisbury. There is also another sale the previous day of British Art pottery Matrtin Bros, William De Morgan, Charles Vyse, Pilkington etc. An interesting collection of Stella Croftd work as well.
           Anyways, as to this catalogue. A good sale with a wide range of pieces. Henderson, Suttie, Rie, Baldwin,  and other significant potters. The first page of the catalogueis mainly Leach school. There are a couple of nice Janet Leach and Shoji Hamada pieces.

A good sale with another large amount of Batterham from the potter's estate plus some very nice pieces of art pottery as well as studio items, Wooley's autumn sale is normally worth waiting for and always contains something of interest.

https://www.woolleyandwallis.co.uk/departments/20th-century-design/da301122-2/?p=1&s=160&v=list#lot-547

Results of the sale. Most went within what were rather low estmates. Peter Beard, Angus Suttie and John Ward did well. One does get the feeling that the Studio Pottery bread and butter market is reacting to the prevailingdoom and gloom.

Hi philpot, I couldn't agree more the Mallams sale today also gave the same impression, as for the black and white John Ward pot in Wooley's, i thought i might buy it but at the moment i am not prepared to get dragged into five figures for a pot.

Looking at both sales, the Mallams one was largely a collection of bits and bobs, with most of them not very popular these days. The W & W sale had much better pieces and I thought the Batterhams made more than I would have expected, considering that a number of "new collectors" of his work that fell for the hype have become cheesed off. Most of the other potters that haven't been mentioned above sold (when commission is added on) for more than I would have expected to achieve for the the same pieces, if I was selling them.

Basically, there's a lot of stuff coming up for auction and if the doom and gloom was really concerning buyers, I think a larger number would have gone unsold.

From my recent experiences, the vast majority of studio pottery collectors still have money to spend but have far more choice than I have known since I began dealing.

Woolley and Wallis spring design sale now on line. The majority of the sale is given over to many pieces of Batterham and Leach school . I am amazed at the take up of this type of ware with so much coming to the market recently.

Several years before Richard Batterham stopped potting the number of people interested in work by him that I had for sale increased considerable and these were new younger collectors in their 30s and 40s. Like the majority of collectors that I have always sold to, these were well paid professionals. They wouldn't have been around in the heyday of the Leach school and so the collecting base is much larger than it was 10 years ago.

What you might call a One-Tone sale for studio pottery. If you are not interested in the Leach school then it is dullsville. It will be interesting to see what prices the Batterham prices fetch. The major V&A exhibition combined with his decease really did increase his prices sharply. It will be interesting to see if the prices have now faded slightly. There is a LOT of his work in this sale!