Perfect Pieces Specialists in British Pottery

Some of my favourite pieces of Troika pottery are the early and unusual smooth glazed sculptural wares in white. Simple in design and decoration yet strangely appealing. At the time only the smaller pieces from this range proved popular with collectors, along with the ever popular textured range. The larger pieces didn’t sell well possibly because of their high price tags.

Due to the unpopularity of the larger pieces fewer were made making them relatively scarce today. However I noticed a couple of these large pieces have appeared on eBay recently including this unusual double candleholder, and this large white glazed fruit bowl. Quite striking centre pieces on anyone’s dining table!

The earlier pieces of Troika are among my favourite, especially those in the dark oxide or bronze glazes. It’s a special area for Troika collectors some staying well clear of these darker more unusual pieces and some collecting them with a passion.

The Troika D-plate, such as this one, offers an interesting alternative to standard round chargers and are almost always decorated with the bronze and dark glazes. This version has the standard printed Troika St Ives pottery mark. Occasionally they can be found with the moudled Troika St Ives mark along with the moulded Trident mark which is always nice. Nevertheless it is a nice example with some fantastic coloured glazes in the centre. At around 8″ square these D-plates always look good and offer a change from the many vases that often dominate collections!

If you saw the Troika Love plaque that finished recently on eBay but your pockets weren’t quite deep enough then don’t despair Troika made a range of plaques some more affordable than others!

Equally attractive and more affordable the Troika Stove plaque and Calculator plaque are just as collectable and often more obtainable to many people. The Calculator plaque is roughly 12″ by 9″ in dimension, still quite a substantial size for a piece of Troika. With buttons that stick out, reminiscence of a calculator, this plaque has an altogether different feel to the flowing geographical design of the Love Plaque or the Thames plaque.

Often when one unusual piece appears on eBay it can start a mini trend for a while as people with similar items spot it and decide to list their pieces. Currently there is a rather nice (and in perfect condition!) Calculator plaque and funnily enough another equally sized Calculator plaque!

Both slightly different designs, and different artists it once again depends on your collecting angle. I find lots of people like to have one of each model regardless of the artist, however more and more people are collecting a particular artist’s work. Whichever your angle, these plaques certainly make striking additions to any collections!

Troika plaques and tiles were some of the first things to be made by Troika, hence why they are highly sought after, especially those in perfect condition (due to the size of some of the plaques they can often have firing cracks or small nibbles to the edges).

There were many different designs moulded onto the plaques, including the Calculator plaque (looks like a calculator!), the Thames plaque (appears to be the River Thames running through it!), and the Love Plaque that depicts three stages of Love - Love, Marriage and finally wife rules! The Love plaque is an extremely large piece of Troika, roughly 15″ long. You can see quite a nice example currently on eBay (and in perfect condition): Troika Love Plaque.

Made when Troika where still in St Ives most examples display a variation of the Troika St Ives pottery mark and often include the Trident mark and an artist’s signature.

Quite often you will see a BS or SB artist mark on the back. BS represents Troika founder Benny Sirota and SB is for Stella Banjamin who worked at the pottery in the early days from around 1963 to 1967. It’s tricky to tell these two apart as they can look so similar, looking at the way they have been written through an eyeglass can sometimes help.

The Troika pottery produced such a wide range of wares, it’s nice to see that people are finding the plaques as interesting as the other pieces, I certainly like them!

I’ve noticed several times recently that the odd Troika pottery coffin vase appears to have gone sky high recently on eBay. There appears to be nothing special about these vases (regardless of how they describe them) as they are all just standard Coffin vases from the Newlyn period.

Take this Troika vase

At present, you might normally see a Troika coffin retail for between £140-£170 depending on it’s design, decorator and condition. As I write this one’s already at £255 with 3 hours to go.

In the past I’ve seem them go for over £400, which is utter madness.

A few days ago, I reported on the impending launch of a new art collection inspired by Troika Pottery. I’m pleased to say that The Art House have now launched their new ‘Troika Collection 2008′ and it does look rather interesting.

The new collection is described as “modern textured art on canvas” and each piece has been named after a Cornish village - Marazion, for example. The photos give the impression that the artists have really captured the texture and colour of Troika’s textured wares and the designs have certainly captured the Troika Pottery style - without just directly copying it.

You can see full details of the collection here, including close-up photos and prices.

Troika Pottery’s collectable appeal has been stronger in recent years than at any time since its 1960s/70s heyday.

It’s perhaps not surprising, then, that contemporary art website “The Art House” will be producing a new studio collection of artwork paying homage to the designs and themes of the Troika Pottery.

The Troika Collection 2008 will be available soon on their website and you can find an example picture and a little more information on the The Art House Blog.

The single picture (the second one actually is Troika) doesn’t give much idea of what to expect, but I will certainly be interested to see what’s on offer and will post here when more information is available.

As I’ve mentioned before, decent British antique and collectable websites appear to be few and far between on the internet, but there are some.

One example is the Digital Museum of Cornish Ceramics.

It’s home to a huge range of information about many of the studio potteries that have been based in Cornwall over the years. Most notable for many collectors is its collection of information on Troika pottery marks and artists.

Although we also have a fairly wide selection of Troika marks and decorators’ marks, John Mole, the curator of the Cornish Ceramics Museum site, is in touch with many of the original artists at Troika and has been able to verify many of the trickier and more controversial marks - making his site a very useful reference tool.

John also has a fairly comprehensive guide to Troika pottery designs and shapes.

Although the site covers a vast range of other material, I have concentrated on Troika as it is currently one of the most popular and collectable of Cornish potteries.

Also notable and popular at present are the work of the Leach Pottery and that of Carn Pottery, which is still active today.

A note of warning on Carn pottery: If you go to an antique and collectors fair around the UK and see large amounts of the blue/white carn for sale, be aware that it is probably new or very nearly so. Pieces such as these are still being made in considerable quantities and are available from gift shops and the like in Cornwall for quite competitive prices:

Be warned and a little sceptical if anyone tries to tell you they are hard to get hold of. Only older pieces are hard to find. See http://www.fired-specialists-of-carn-pottery.com/ for an excellent book on Carn.

“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.