Caroline Dennard

We peek into the busy working life of the head of the European ceramics and glass department at Halls Fine Art Auctioneers in Shropshire

My interest in ceramics began when I was a history student and helped Shrewsbury Museum to move premises – they had a lot of Roman pottery and I catalogued and photographed it all for the archive. I did some work experience at Halls during the holidays too and was offered a job as a junior specialist in the ceramics department a few months after I left Lancaster University. It was a full- on learning curve with sales every week needing cataloguing, then checking by my boss.

Now I’m head of department, research is still my favourite aspect of the job, where you take one tenuous strand and work backwards to find out the origins of a piece. Over the years, I’ve built up a big personal library of reference and archive pattern books, and every month I budget to buy another for my collection – often they are out of print, but that’s part of the fun.

I contribute to four quarterly fine art sales a year, comprising anything from 100 to 500 lots, plus monthly antiques and interiors sales. My desk is in the storeroom so I’m always surrounded by objects coming up for sale – I quite literally live with them, and spend at least two days out of every five cataloguing. I particularly love 18th and early 19th- century English porcelain – Bow, Chelsea, Worcester and the local Shropshire pottery, Caughley (pronounced ‘calfley’). We sold the Wright Collection of Caughley wares in 2017, which was a highlight of my career – 324 lots illustrating the diversity of patterns and shapes made at the pottery, from mugs to teapots and butter dishes, via vases, inkwells, eyebaths and miniature toy wares. As well as cataloguing, I also photograph every item, and on the day of the sale I help take the phone bids while one of the auctioneers conducts the auction. I hope it goes well for my vendors and we always have one or two sleepers that go way beyond estimate.

01743 450700; fineart.hallsgb.com

FROM LEFT A Caughley porcelain cabbage-leaf moulded jug, c1790, sold for £5,300 (est £3,000–£ 4,000); a Christopher Dresser ‘Clutha’ bottle vase made £3,200 (est £100– £150); an English Delft drug jar made £1,000 recently (est £100–£150).