The salesman and the artist
Last weekend I was away at a very special event. You may know that there are many collector's groups in the UK, each one focused on a very specific type of porcelain. There are groups that study Spode, Derby, Belleek, English ceramics in general, the Staffordshire ceramics, you name it... and last weekend I had been invited to give a talk at the annual meeting of the Daniel Ceramic Circle.
This is a group of collectors that was started just over 25 years ago. At that time, not much was known about the factory of Henry Daniel, and members of this group did a phenomenal amount of research into the subject. They also published a number of excellent reference books, infinitely improving our understanding of this very special maker.
I was invited not to speak about Daniel, but about a topic that had found its way to me in the last two years: Samuel Alcock. You may remember that I launched the collection of Murray Pollinger, another collector who did very important research. Many Daniel collectors had been wondering about Samuel Alcock and had noticed that there was no published material available, so they were thrilled to be presented some of Murray's research and start to understand Alcock, a contemporary maker to Daniel and fellow Rococo Revival designer.
I wasn't the only speaker on the day; there was a talk by Florence Tyler, curator of the 19th Century Ceramics and Glass collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum. She had just included a new collection of Daniel pieces, which came from the same collection that I currently have quite a few pieces for sale of. There were several excellent talks by group members who had done very specific research into some of the connections the Daniel factory had to other factories, as well as to retailers as far away as Odessa in Ukraine. And of course there was plenty of opportunity to socialise and meet old and new friends; I had a lovely time with some of my fellow dealers and really enjoyed meeting the group members who had done so much research and were so knowledgeable.
A nice challenge of preparing this talk was to contrast the two makers, which also had so much in common as they worked in the same market at the same time. That's why I ended up calling the talk "The Salesman and the Artist"; Henry Daniel being an artist who ran a factory to enable him to create without limit, and Samuel Alcock being a salesman who made his money selling beautiful creations. While many of their styles were similar, their approaches were completely different, with Daniel emphasising quality and Alcock producing whatever was in demand by the market.
In case you want to find out more about Alcock, watch this space as I am now starting to work on a website that will show Murray Pollinger's important and unique research, and will become a depository for all Alcock's styles and pattern numbers, with a full image archive. It will take some time though - please be patient!
Where to find things
You can find lots of Henry Daniel and Samuel Alcock stock on my website, and you can find all my available stock here. If you always want to see the latest additions, follow me on Instagram... I post pictures and a story several times a week.
Happy weekend, and go meet some people who you share a passion with!
Meeting friends: having lunch with fellow porcelain dealers Nicole Li and Hitomi Sasaki
This week's treasures
Apologies, there is a bug in the website that means I cannot link most of below images directly
(I know that's crummy... please fix it, Wix!)
You can find them all here: https://www.gentlerattleofchina.com/all-items
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