Mintons Secessionist Art Nouveau Vase-Piece of the Week.

Sometimes a design or a colour scheme on a piece of pottery just works. We have all had that feeling where you can't put your finger on it, but it reminds you of something.

Whether it appeals to your subconscious mind, your primeval or just that they remind you of a flower you once held.

Designers and decorators are usually picked for their ability to recognise these signals to the senses, before they pass them on to us.

I grabbed at a small vase as it came out of a dealers box, just as he was putting it on his stall. I had to have it. “I have just got it from a house clearance I did this week” he told me.

“Its mine” I parted with my cash.

The first thing one thinks is how close the tube lined design is to another by Archibald Knox, even though there is no evidence of him designing for Mintons, and this is, obviously a Mintons vase from a mile away.

Leon Solon (1852-1957) who joined the company in 1895, aged 23, probably will have designed this pattern..

The shape no is 3543, most secessionist pieces are in the 3000's. The pattern is no 46.

In 1905 Solon left the company and John Wadsworth took over and many of Solons work continued though Wadsworth brought in new colour schemes.

This is a slip cast vase that is tube lined. I love the way the glaze drips or slumps into one another creating a further pallet.

Leons father Louis Solon had worked for Sevres and the colour of this vase is almost a Sevres blue.

I have seen it decorated in red, which does not work as well.

The difference between a good Mintons Secessionist (the term derived from the continental) and a average one can be quite close, and sometimes there are pieces that don't work, but this works, on all levels

. Marked on the base with its pattern number and its incised shape. I am struggling to part with it, for..... money.

Mintons, the name Minton, without the 's' was changed in 1873.

In 1870 when the art pottery studio was opened in South Kensington it was directed by W.S Coleman.

It was not rebuilt when destroyed by fire in 1875.

I always think as Mintons secessionist as an entirely different company, a style of its age, but still with the old quality. 

Its designers absorbed all the Art Nouveau influences around it, and in doing so led a unique and exiting trail that is most attractive and highly collectable today. 

Still a little under-ated. This vase though small some 7 inches high should be worth £180. 

If its not then its cheap. I love this vase. 

http://www.classicartdeco.co.uk/ceramics.php

Rochard Tern Art Deco Sculpture-Piece Of The Week.

 Irenee Rochard was a French sculptor working during the Art Deco Inter War period.
This is a Tern cresting a wave or maybe to be more precise a Storm Petrel
 The Storm Petrel is a beautiful and is one of the smallest sea birds.
The Guadalupe Storm Petrel is thought to have gone extinct.
It spends most of the year on the wing and only comes inland to breed.

It is signed Rochard and there is always a presumption that it is by Irenee but there were several French animaliers who went under the name of  Rochard.
Irenee as her name suggests was a lady.
Born 1906 in Villefranche sur Saone.
 She was a member of the Artists Society from 1938 where she won a bronze medal in 1941.
She died in the 1980's but most her work seems to have been carried out during the Inter War years.
It was not common for a lady to be a sculptor (see Lejan ) during the first half of the 20th century.

Thankfully that has now changed but it makes it more remarkable that a lady was producing such masculine sculptures.
She did a lot of strong masculine Panthers and her work is mostly Art Deco in style.
Her sculpture is generally is cast in Bronze and Spelter and has varying degrees of quality ranging from magnificent to average.
This sculpture was described a s a seagull when I bought it.
But when you look at it more closely it is unfair to describe it that way.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
 This comes apart in two sections the bird itself sits on a spigot on the top of the wave which makes it easier to carry. It is 61cm high and has a gilded finish no big scratches or damage.
I have sold quite a few of what I call Tern sculptures, but I always leave the seagulls behind.
There are quite a lot by lesser sculptors that look like they have flown into a brick wall and are a bit "gammy" for want of a better word. its best to pay a little it more for the right one. In bronze it would be over a thousand pounds.
The good thing about this piece is that it cuts a good silhouette against a window or on a cabinet, for not too much money really.
 Expect to pay about £450, for a nice one, and don't buy a squawker.

Antiques Trade Gazette-Do They Really Want Debate. A Letter To The Editor.

Sir,

How to become an art adviser (issue 2163 back page) read more like an advertisement for various self appointed art associations to my taste, than a informed and deliberate attempt to make a debate thereof.
There needs a full and frank assessment as to the varying degree of professional advice in the art market, that is without doubt. But this was not it.
In France auctioneers and valuers and advisers are regulated by law, here “anyone with a suit a business card or a well heeled handbag” can put themselves forward as an expert and set up an auction house.
This is where the real conflict lies, surely it is now time, that the art and auction market, which is now mostly online, that all auctioneers and advisers need to be regulated, and have to prove themselves.
A quick survey of estimates can be so hilarious, how can they be so wrong.
The quality advisers will have nothing to fear with another certificate to calm their clients nerves.
But will ATG pronounce the idea in light of the success of the saleroom.com.
The art market is full of ponzi schemes, we all know this but what the said article seems to pour scorn over is the un-calibrated power of professional hard working dealers, the ones who know all the tricks of the unregulated trade and will lead the client through the pitfalls of the art consultancy market in its present form. That don't get praise because they are just working hard. 
Though I concede the writer tried to mention this unregulated consultancy market but then went on to say he was invited into a private club closed to all but a lucky few.
Beauty is always in the eye of the beholder.
Theorhetical Qualifications cannot buy experience in my opinion.

Please could we have a little less condescending articles based around how great someone with varying degrees of professional paid for education is.
Or how jolly wonderful the old school tie brigade who have run the trade for decades are.  
And could we have more about the passion of the trade and its collective experiences.
I think its time for regulation.
And a serious look into the auction market and how it can help auctioneers clients rather than themselves.
There is such a high level of knowledge in the antique trade so what would most reputable auctioneers have to worry about.
Now that's a real debate.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/should-uk-auctioneers-be-regulated.html

Liverpool Everyman Wins The 2014 Stirling Prize.

But did they really have to knock it down?
Well there you go. The Liverpool Everyman wins an award.
 Beating The Shard to scoop The 2014 Stirling Prize.
So did I get it wrong when I said in 2013 that it should have been retained?
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/the-liverpool-everymansuch-tragedy-why.html  

I cant get my head around the way that the building was deemed unfit for human habitation and had to be demolished.

I considered that the walls were sweating with the history of the place, that has yet to be fully identified. Liverpool is a town, that knocked the Cavern Club down.........and then called itself Beatles City.

The building will now be favored by the public as it is now in the full glare of national publicity and the spotlight is on Liverpool for being modern and progressive in Architecture and design. Well at least we are not winning The Carbuncle Cup award for bad Architecture in the World Heritage Site.
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/liverpool-wins-carbuncle-cup.html

http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2011/09/museum-of-liverpool-runner-up-in-2011.html


Could I be switching my opinion on this building after it won the Stirling Prize, well I have never been in it so I will have to now go and have a look and see.

Read more from The Guardian on the link below.

http://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2014/oct/16/stirling-prize-riba-everyman-theatre-haworth-tompkins

The judges citation read;
‘The new Everyman in Liverpool is truly for every man, woman and child. It cleverly resolves so many of the issues architects face every day. Its context - the handsome street that links the two cathedrals – is brilliantly complemented by the building’s scale, transparency, materials and quirky sense of humour, notably where the solar shading is transformed into a parade of Liverpudlians.

‘The ambience of the theatre is hugely welcoming with three elegant and accessible public foyers for bars, lounges and café/bistro. Clever use of materials with interlocking spaces and brilliant lighting make this an instantly enjoyable new public space for the city.

‘It is exceptionally sustainable; not only did the construction re-use 90% of the material from the old theatre, but all spaces are naturally ventilated including the auditorium with its 440 seats. Clever, out of sight concrete labyrinths supply and expel air whilst maintaining total acoustic isolation. It is one of the first naturally ventilated auditoria in the UK.

‘The generosity of its public spaces, which, on a tight site, are unexpected and delightful, are used throughout the day and night. As Howarth Tompkins’ first completely new theatre, it is a culmination of their many explorations into the theatre of the 21st century.

‘It is ground-breaking as a truly public building, which was at the heart of the client’s philosophy and ethos. In summary, an extraordinary contribution to both theatre and the city, achieved through clever team working – client, architect, consultants and contractor – where the new truly celebrates the past.’

Arthur Dooley's Last Studio Ransacked To Make Way For Flats. Its a Disgrace. Exclusive.

How long can Liverpool keep on losing links with its past and its history.

Arthur Dooley was a sculptor that I believe could not have come from anywhere other than here in my home town of Liverpool.

I fought to try and save herbert Tyson Smith's sculpture studio at the Bluecoat, predicting it would become a cheap and nasty gift shop. Guess what has happened.

There next to the garden was an evocative and inspiring glimpse of a man who helped form modern Liverpool. http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/herbert-tyson-smith-bronze-piece-of-week.html

He sculpted many of the reliefs on buildings such as Martins Bank Building with its slave iconocraphy and a lot of monuments around the town.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/should-herbert-tyson-smith-sculpture.html

His stone carving that was on display at the Old Post office has been restored and is on show in the Met Quarter which now stands on the site. It may be slightly tucked away from the main drag but none the less with a little seaching you can easily find it. Herbert Tyson smith may have been accepted by the establishment and Liverpools merchant classes. Arthur Dooley never was although most of his work was for the clergy who also had a rennaisance in fortune after the second world war, where they were rebuilding and modernising building some godawful structures along the way.

Now another chance goes begging.

It was Arthur Dooley, I am led to believe who coined the phrase Paddy's Wigwam the Metropolitan cathedral of Christ The King, that is now becoming part of the accepted landscape, mainly by people who dont recall that it was Jerry built and leaked like a collander and needed extensive repairs within years.

Dooley was a character that did not hold back his punches, literally being a bit of a boxer himself he came to blows during one argument with ..........in The Everyman..........now demolished to make way for the New Everyman........isnt that a sexcist term these days, shouldnt it be called the Everyperson.

 I know he would have been fighting against its demolition if he was alive.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/arthur-dooley-bull-piece-of-week.html

He would also have put up a good fight to save Tyson-Smiths Studio.

Now his last studio in Seal street has been ransacked by cretinous property developers right next to the psuedo Liverpool Acadamy of arts that held a fantastic Dooley exhibtion in 2008.

The Acadamy of arts is a pale shadow of its original form that Dooley helped to recreate but none the less it had finance to stage a wonderful exhibition.

June Lornie who runs the present Acadamy has not been able to do anything to inform the public as to the impending disaster that has now unfolded I am informed regrettably, due to ill health.

So no one knew until it was too late.

Whether or not the Do Littles of this city would have cared anyway. 

Whether it would have interupted their Frapaccino lifestyle and they could have helped save it, is now hypathetical, or maybe just pathetical. 

A sad epitaph is now that no-one except the Dooley speculators care. Some of those speculators pretending to be interested in art that wouldn't know a decent sculpture if it fell on them. 

Dooley wasn't the best sculptor around.

 In fact he wasn't even a good sculptor, he got it wrong more times than he got it right. 

But he had something inside him that drove passion which is what we all are now familiar with. 

He fought for  things he believed in.

 Its not his fault that in Brain Drain Liverpool he didn't have a tradition of artistic training for the working class and he became a metalworker first and then used his experience to manufacture emotion by default. Dooleys son Paul told me that upon his fathers death in 1994 the phone never stopped ringing with people who wanted to buy his work, sensing a upward trend they now wanted to buy his art, when for decades he had struggled to pay the bills.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/arthur-dooley-centurion-piece-of-week.html

This is his studio almost intact at 34-36 Seel Street he was a active member of the Liverpool Academy. He campaigned to have the right for Liverpool artists to show their wares outside the Bluecoat. He is slowly being recognised as an important man active in town planning not afraid to have his say.

Remember Him.

I warned about this years ago. It is a sad day when one of Liverpool's ebulient characters studio is ransacked to turn it into …......flats.

http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2010/09/arthur-dooley-remember-him-and-save-his.html

Should The Herbert Tyson Smith Sculpture Yard Come Back To The Bluecoat School Lane Liverpool?

I went to a event at the Bluecoat as part of the national Heritage Open Days that happens annually in September.

It was a conversation with Brian Biggs and James McLaughlin who had worked with the great man, starting as an apprentice.

Sun 14 Sep

2 - 3pm Herbert Tyson Smith
The Bluecoat’s Artistic Director, Bryan Biggs, in conversation with James McLaughlin, who was apprenticed to Tyson Smith, the eminent Liverpool sculptor who had a studio at the Bluecoat and was involved in establishing the building an arts centre. (The talk takes place in what was his original studio, entrance in College Lane)

http://www.thebluecoat.org.uk/events/view/events/2304

James is deaf and dumb and his son Matt did a great job of putting his thoughts into words.

At one point he was explaining about how Herbert and Jeffrey, his brother would argue all the time and often come to blows. There is passion in that there sculpture.

I did not know he had a brother and hope I have got the interpretation correct, because it is as if he did not exist, Herbert taking all the plaudits for the work.
Possibly on purpose if they were that much at loggerheads.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herbert_Tyson_Smith

It seems easier to ask the reader to look down Wikipedia than me listing Tyson Smiths sterling work.

I let the small group who attended have their questions and then I first needed to make a comment and then a question to all.

I had fought a battle trying to get a separate listing within the Bluecoat general heritage listing and was not successful.
Herbert Tyson Smiths Sculpture Studio was left in a wonderful state of preservation.
Lots of his original work was on display moulds and tools etc. Any other city would have seen its potential. I accused the directors of the Bluecoat of being foolish I letting it go.

“We did not have the resourses” Brian Biggs said

“You had 14 million quid” I said

“Yes but that was for capital resourses”

“So you knock it down and get a shop in selling cheap Indonesian and Chinese rubbish instead”

He went on with a load of excuses leaving me in no doubt the reason why we lost another piece of Liverpool heritage that could have helped to promote our city to the millions of tourists who come here.
The people voted with their feet and the bargain bin shop is now closed and the place is empty.........a perfect opportunity. I said, which seemed to go down well, with all but Brian.

The page isn't long enough to list the excuses he gave even quoting to me the difficulties in getting some historical context back.
He started talking about the Edward Chambre Hardman archive, and the difficulties in getting that up and running.

This was a mistake as I told him in no uncertain terms that when I got involved in that quest I heard all the same negative stuff from a bunch of washed up trustees that had been there far too long.
They wanted to send the archive to Bradford!!!!!!

In the end we, campaigners created such a fuss that the trustees had to bow to public opinion and the national Trust stepped in.
I am so proud of the role I played as the Chairman of "The Friends of Chambre Hardman."
This sort of commitment may be required again.

It got me annoyed, what an opportunity missed.
You at the Bluecoat spend far too much time trying to make money on weddings.
I had proclaimed, there is a lot who agree.
http://liverpoolpreservationtrust.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/i-had-owner-of-business-in-bluecoat-in.html

The Bluecoat, the grand old lady of Liverpool seen the blitz, being rebuilt, used to be a wonderful artistic creative hub with a cafe and now has become a cafe with a exhibition room. I have not seen a decent expo for years there, now. What has happened to the place.
http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/james-mcneill-whistler-and-peacock-room.html

So they destroy the intact studio and then probably farm a grant off the arts council, or some of the public body to hold a talk, about Herbert Tyson Smith, remembering him in the place that Mr Biggs and co destroyed.
You couldn't make it up.

I apologised to both James and Matt for my strong views on what was to be a pleasant Sunday afternoon in conversation and many of the people there, some of whom rescued works from the Bluecoat directors act of vandalism in 2008, when Liverpool was European Capital of Culture.
All including James and Matt said it would be a wonderful idea.
Well all, but poor old scorned, Brian Biggs who sat there with a face like a singed cat.

 http://waynecolquhoun.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/herbert-tyson-smith-bronze-piece-of-week.html

Some fresh blood needs to be brought in before they do anymore damage.

Bring back Herbert Tyson Smith to the Bluecoat.

Antiques Roadshow-What An Amazing Experience Filming In Lutyens Crypt.

I had been invited on to the show to talk about the etched glass door panels by Hector Whistler that were originally fitted in the doors in the foyer of The Liverpool Philharmonic Hall in Hope Street.

They were filming in Lutyens Crypt of the Catholic Cathedral.

Watch A Video Here

Fiona Bruce as usual, had a crowd around her, as she was filmed talking about the most amazing door to a tomb, the circular revolving door that is made of stone, the idea is everything, symbolic of the stone said to have closed the Tomb of Christ.
Lutyens took the idea and made it work.

The panels looked great up there on the stage where I recall playing clarinet on Terry Riley's “In C” with ApaT orchestra in almost the same place.

It was an early start and all the usual celeb antique appraisers were there.

Seasoned veteran and AR legend Eric Knowles came over to say Hello saying he couldn't do the filming of them because we know each other.

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006mj2y

20^th century specialist Will Farmer was assigned the task of talking about them, jokingly I said to him stopping me may be a job once I get going.

As it happened it went along extremely professionally and I think it will come over really well.

I could have sold them ages ago but I have been waiting for the right buyer who will show them off

Yes I know, how the Philharmonic let them go is a mystery to me too.

It was such a pleasure to be part of such a amazing team of people right down to the volunteers who helped people arrive and made the day a pleasant experience. 

It was wonderful all the experts were down to earth and helpful.

I had no greasy palms or nerves, it was a great opportunity to talk about Liverpool's great history.

Being part of something that inspired me to become an antique dealer is fantastic and helping to promote a piece of heritage.

I hung around as long as I could absorbing the atmosphere from the set.

This is a programme that I have watched since a child the very beginnings of my journey must have been started as long ago by the amazing descriptions from Arthur Negus.

Read More Here

I hope they were happy with my appearance as it was a honour to have been allowed to be part of it.

 I loved it.  I hope I can do it again.

Update:28th February 2019......I joined The Antiques Roadshow Team very shortly after and am looking forward to a new season filming. Please click the link below for more information about the team and the show.
I am proud to be a BBC Antiques Roadshow specialist.