Perfect Pieces Specialists in British Pottery

This article follows on from Part 1, which explains how you should check the age, authenticity and identity of your piece. In Part 2, we look at how you can find any damage, wear or restoration on antique
ceramics.

1. Crash, Bang, Wallop…

While it’s important to check the age and authenticity of a piece, your biggest concern should probably be its condition:

1. Ping the piece with your fingernail. Different materials and shapes make different noises - from bell-like to fairly dull. However, a restored piece will give an utterly-lifeless clonk when pinged.

This test is always a good starting point.

2. Run your fingertip around any edges on the piece - you will often find small chips in this way that you’d miss by just looking at the edges.

3. Examine the piece carefully and look for changes in colour, texture or the line of a curve - all of which are tell-tale signs of repair or restoration.

For example, you may sometimes find that a curved edge has a flat spot on it - this is where a small chip or fault has been ground down and painted over, to conceal it and prevent it worsening.

4. Check any gilding carefully - original gilding may be tarnished with age but should basically be shiny, perfectly smooth and have straight edges.

Gilding that has been applied by hand to restore the original will normally have a duller sheen, will often show brush marks and not have perfectly straight edges, or be as fine.

Again, once you have seen a few you will instinctively recognise restored gilding.

5. Cracks, hairlines, etc. They may be the most obvious of faults, but finding them can be hard. Don’t be afraid to try and find some decent light for this - sunlight is best, but failing that a good artificial
light.

If it’s china/porcelain (e.g. a tea service), try holding the piece up to the light. If it’s pottery, slowly examine the whole piece and look for any lines across the glaze. It can be hard to tell the difference
between general crazing and a crack - as a guide, most people will consider it a crack if it goes the whole way through or if you can get your fingernail in it - it’s a bit of a grey area…

A crack won’t necessarily stop a piece pinging - so don’t rely on a ping test to decide whether a piece is free of cracks.

4. All Worn Down…

While a little natural age adds to a piece’s charm and authenticity, excessive wear can ruin a piece, especially if it affects the pattern badly.

Wear can take a number of forms - depending on the type of piece and the decorating style that’s been used on it. Here are a few examples:

• Gilding wear - can be partial, which is quite obvious, or gilding can be completely missing, which is sometimes hard to see. Look for a slight “shadow” where the gilding used to be and the background colour is slightly darker than elsewhere.

• Enamel wear - piece decorated with coloured enamels overglaze can sometimes have whole pieces of enamel missing. These can just flake of cleanly, leaving no trace behind. Look for any gaps or uncoloured sections of the pattern.

• Glaze wear - rubbing, scratching and sometimes fading can all occur. It’s down to you to decide whether the level of wear is acceptable or not. If the piece is rare enough and the price is right, then why not
go for it?

On the other hand, common pieces in poor condition make poor purchases, as a general rule.

I hope this guide has been useful - there is no substitute for experience when buying antique and collectable ceramics, but knowing what to look for and having the confidence to do so is half the battle.

You can see the first part of this guide - how to check for identity, authenticity and completeness - here.

Buying antique pottery and ceramics can be a risky process. It’s all too easy to get home and find that you’ve missed a hairline crack, a restored handle or one of the hundreds of other faults that might
exist.

While there is nothing wrong with choosing to buy ceramics in less than perfect condition, I am sure that you, like I do, prefer to know about it beforehand and make sure the price paid reflects the condition.

Poor saleroom and fair lighting, inaccurate descriptions and even unscrupulous dealers can all combine to make buying safely harder than it should be.

To help you avoid these pitfalls, we’ve put together a guide to checking ceramics - from identity and authenticity through to checking for damage, restoration and wear.

We’ve divided this guide into two parts:

Part 1 - Checking the authenticity and identity of a piece

Part 2 - Inspecting a piece for faults, damage, wear and restoration

1. What is it?

Sounds obvious, but is the piece you are looking at what it’s being sold as?

Check that the shape, pattern and pottery markings are all consistent with each other and with the piece itself. Mis-described and incorrectly marked (when manufactured) pieces aren’t unknown, although
they are uncommon.

Don’t be afraid to dig out a pattern guide or reference book to check a pattern or shape number - no one remembers them all!

Once you are happy with the authenticity of the piece, check it is complete.

Should it have a lid, frog (for flowers), detachable handle (e.g. biscuit barrels) or perhaps an accompanying spoon, knife or box?

It’s a case of caveat emptor, I’m afraid - you need to think about what you’re seeing and ask any questions before you buy. Any reputable dealer should be happy (and able) to explain why something is the way
it is.

2. Have The Years Left Their Mark?

It should always be apparent if a piece has some “age” or not. Even if it is in immaculate condition and has been stored away from bright light, dust and dirt, it should still feel old.

This is a hard one to describe - but if unsure look for small details:

• Do the pottery markings look old?
• Is the base a little worn/dirty where it has stood on different surfaces?
• Is there any crazing?
• Is there any dirt, discolouration or wear? Look in nooks and crannies or where lids, etc. fit on the main body

If you’ve been through each of the checks I’ve descrbed, you should now have a fairly good idea of the identity and authenticity of your piece - and you will probably already have noticed any obvious damage
or restoration to it.

To learn more about how to spot and understand damage, wear and restoration, check out Part 2 of this post by clicking on the link below:

Part 2 - Inspecting a piece for faults, damage, wear and restoration

“There’s an unspoken rule in trading antiques that it is the buyer’s responsibility to determine the authenticity of the pieces.”

This interesting quote came not from the Delboy Trotter manual of market trading, but from an article I happened across on the ChinaDaily.com website, reporting the successful prosecution of an antique coin dealer for selling 110 counterfeit coins, which he claimed had been unearthed at a construction site.

His three year jail sentence has generated something of an uproar amongst his fellow antique dealers, who it seems are not usually held to the same ethical standards as other industries - it seems that the scale and bare-faced cheek of the offence were this dealer’s downfall.

Closer To Home

While reputable dealers in the UK take pride in being able to vouch for the quality and authenticity of their stock, fakes are not unknown, as too are honest mistakes and ambiguous labelling by dealers and auction houses.

Take the seemingly innocuous phrase “Marked as….” for example. Carelessly read, it may be interpreted as “This object is…” but the reality is that it may mean completely the opposite - “This object is pretending to be….”

An example that comes to mind is Troika Pottery. At more than one auction house in Yorkshire and the Midlands I have seen objects described as “Marked as Troika” - when they are quite obviously not. In one case, several genuine pieces of Troika sat alongside two very ordinary studio pottery vases that had simply had a Troika-style mark applied to their base. Yet the catalogue suggested that all pieces were Troika.

Look at it this way - if I stuck a Mercedes badge on my Ford, could I sell it as a Mercedes?

What Should You Do?

The reality is that whatever the legal niceties of a situation, buyers should beware:

• Research what you are buying
• Ask questions - particularly of a dealer
• Look out for inexplicable anomalies or cagey wording in items’ descriptions
• If you aren’t convinced, walk away, or just buy it anyway - but only as an aesthetically-pleasing object, nothing more.

I used Troika as an example as it is currently popular, yet new enough for it not to be all that widely understood. A couple of developments over the last year also seem to me to have increased the likelihood of fakes appearing:

1. Authentic unpainted pieces have been being sold, cheaply and in quite high volumes, through auction houses and on eBay. These are genuine, but for some reason were never decorated. I imagine it would be relatively simple for someone with the right skills to decorate these and pass them off as originals.
2. A selection of the original moulds, sold to a private collector when the pottery closed in 1983, have been made available for sale. While there is every possibility these will go to a good home, they may also not do, and one imagines could be used to produce new pieces, to be sold as apparent bargains at car boots, etc..

To learn more about Troika pottery, feel free to browse our wide selection of genuine Troika Pottery and Troika Marks.

When Is Charlotte Rhead Not Charlotte Rhead?

More subtle variations of this problem also exist - one notable example is that of Charlotte Rhead and Crown Ducal. It appears that various moulds and various trademarks were both separately, and legitimately, sold to the same person - who then commenced manufacturing items from the moulds, and adding the trademarks he had purchased to them. This does of course create a thoroughly misleading impression of the provenance of these modern pieces.

These links have more information, and are worth a visit:

• Crown Ducal by Charlotte Rhead - Reproductions
• Beware the Moulds - an article about what has happened
• SylvaC fakes - Some information on SylvaC fakes and reproductions

Remember - always feel free to buy a dubious item for the pleasure it gives you, but make sure you know what you are looking at, and pay accordingly.