The world leaders in pottery
Figurines commemorating the wartime efforts of both the Allied commanders and the rank and file are also a fitting memento of an upstart company’s bid to take on the established ceramics giants
THE little characters pictured here were completely new to me when I saw them in an auction catalogue the other day. Then blow me down if a few days later I didn’t see a Winston Churchill for sale at an antiques fair.
Sadly, when I went back, clutching the £40 to buy Winnie, he’d already been snapped up. He who hesitates...
The figures were made in about 1940 by the Bovey Pottery Company in Devon. They commemorate those who served in the Second World War. The caricature of Churchill – marked “The Boss” – was the most popular of the 19 figures that made up the set, called “Our Gang”.
They were designed with an eye on the witty stoicism of the country during wartime by sculptor Gwyneth Holt, under the art direction of architect Fenton Wyness.
The Dictionary of Scottish Architects describes Aberdeen-born James Fenton Wyness, also known as Tony (1903-1974) thus: “While he could be entertaining, his intolerance of compromise, strongly opinionated and somewhat touchy temperament... made him difficult to work with.”
He studied at Aberdeen School of Architecture and Gray’s School of Art and was apprenticed to Lord Aberdeen’s estate architect James Cobban. He began practising under his own name in 1929, continuing to work until his retirement in 1964.
He was a prolific author of books about the history and architecture of the North East, and was editor of The Deeside Field magazine.
How he came to collaborate with Gwyneth Holt is not clear, but he became a consultant to the Bovey Pottery in 1940. Clearly she had no trouble working with him.
Rose Gwyneth Cobden Holt (1909-1995) was born in Wednesbury, Staffordshire, and studied at Wolverhampton School of Art and Design with the prominent Art Deco sculptor Richard Garbe at the Royal College of Art. He carved the imposing Medieval Age and Modern Age figure groups for the front of the National Museum of Wales, Cardiff.
Gwyneth clearly impressed him. When he retired he is said to have given her his tools for working in ivory, a medium in which she excelled.
She married sculptor Thomas Bayliss Huxley-Jones whom she had met at art school and the couple lived in Aberdeen, he being appointed Head of Sculpture at Gray’s School of Art, where she and Wyness would have become acquainted.
The Our Gang figures must have been an amusing distraction from their more studious work.
The 19 gang members are all affectionate caricatures, each around eight inches (20cms) tall and each modelled to emphasise the quirks of their role, rank or position.
Naturally, the Boss is smoking a cigar; President Roosevelt wears a fedora; the sergeant major is barking an order; the land girl wears a demure smile; the Anzac soldiers from Australia and New Zealand their unmistakeable hats; the sailor overly wide bell bottoms; the Scottish soldier a kilt; the Navy captain a smart double-breasted uniform; the Tommy a side cap and big boots and so on.
Prices vary owing to rarity. The challenge is to find all 19 figures, the hardest to get hold of perhaps being Stalin, which Lawrences estimated at £300-£500. Land Girl was guided at £300-£350, the Airman Pilot at £200-£250 and the Home Guard at £80-£120.
Most are finished in a matte buff glaze, but others are glazed white, while rarities and factory prototypes are fully coloured.
Clay deposits in around Bovey Tracey and Newton Abbot in South Devon attracted a pottery industry in the early 18th century.
Staffordshire potters saw the chance to open works there to avoid transporting the clay to their existing factories, but the brown coal available was not capable of providing sufficient heat to produce quality pottery and the idea failed.
Indeed, the great Josiah Wedgwood visited the area in 1775, but dismissed the fledgling Indeo Pottery company founded by London businessman Nicholas Crisp in 1766, describing it as: “a poor trifling concern, and conducted in a wretched slovenly manner.”
The Bovey Tracey Pottery Company founded in 1843 was the most successful venture, which by 1851 employed 300 workers making “earthenware equal in quality and design to the best Staffordshire wares”, according to contemporary reports.
However, it declined under new management and closed in 1894, to be revived the same year as the Bovey Pottery Company, managed by a Bristol-based company T.B. Johnson. It closed in 1957.
Panel Collectors familiar with the Scottish pottery Wemyss ware (pronounced Weems) will know that when the Fife pottery producing it closed in 1930, the rights and the moulds producing it were acquired by the Bovey Tracey company.
Joseph Nekola, son of Karel the original head of the Fife decorating shop, and many of his workers moved to Devon to take control of production and train apprentices.
Some, but not all, of the pieces made by Wemyss decorators during this time are marked “Plichta” after Jan Plichta, a Czech exporter of glass and pottery wholesale, who required his purchases from the company to be marked with his name.
They date from 1939 and can cause confusion among collectors. Joseph died of diabetes in 1952 and production of Wemyss in Devon ended in 1957 when the TB Johnson company closed the factory.
Original Wemyss ware produced in Scotland is rare and valuable. Wemyss and pieces marked Plichta made in Devon less so, but unless it’s marked clearly, it takes an expert eye to tell the difference. Best advice is to buy from specialist dealer and auction houses, sources that guarantee what they sell.