Ceramic advice???

bluescoobyblu

Hi everyone,
Newbie on here, just looking for some helpful advice but not sure if this is the right place??
I have a ceramic plate which I believe may be worth something but having trouble identifying it.
It has a signature but I think it may be studio pottery by an individual.
Does anyone know of a site where you can maybe upload an image for identifying or valuation????
Cheers
Steve

vuvuzela

Try here I bet there are some people that will know.

Crowqueen

Also look at eBay.com (the American site)'s community boards. There are a lot of collector specific forums which have an international clientele - I have hung around the stamp boards since I joined eBay in 2002 and they are always full of very knowledgeable people who do know a bit about high-end stuff so will probably be helpful in appraising the item as well.

Crowqueen

Further to my above post, this board here:

http://forums.ebay.com/db2/forum/Pottery-Glass-Porcelain/75

would be a good one to post on. All you need is your eBay ID, or you might like to register a posting ID - be aware if you have less than 10 feedback you will be restricted to 10 posts per day, but that might be adequate. Obviously there is no obligation to sell on eBay but it's usually a good place to start when looking for a value.

bluescoobyblu

That's great...I will check those forums out.
I've been on Ebay for years now but never thought of looking at the community side of things.
Trying to find a good source of items for resell...started off with CDs now moving in to ceramics.
Thanks again!!

soolin

bluescoobyblu wrote: »

That's great...I will check those forums out.
I've been on Ebay for years now but never thought of looking at the community side of things.
Trying to find a good source of items for resell...started off with CDs now moving in to ceramics.
Thanks again!!

Ceramics are not doing well at the moment, I have several box loads of studio type pottery in storage waiting for the market to recover.

Remember to make sure you are properly registered with HMRC as a trader, but maybe be prepared to store the ceramics for a while until the market recovers. Alternatively take a while and go through the completed listings on ebay using key words like 'signed ceramic' 'studio ware' etc and see if you can see anything in a similar style, if so check out whether seller has a photo of the signature and whether yours matches. It might take a while as every bit of home made or studio made pottery is sold as something special, and there are actually very few ceramic artists that are well known enough to command a price with the postage.

pulliptears

soolin wrote: »

Ceramics are not doing well at the moment, I have several box loads of studio type pottery in storage waiting for the market to recover.

You can barely give ceramics away here in Stoke. I see so many full tea sets, gorgeous vases etc that are in the charity shops week after week. Even saw a load of Royal Doulton ladies yesterday at £20 each! I commented to OH that they commanded £100+ ten years ago and now they cant get £20 for them in a second hand shop.

soolin

pulliptears wrote: »

You can barely give ceramics away here in Stoke. I see so many full tea sets, gorgeous vases etc that are in the charity shops week after week. Even saw a load of Royal Doulton ladies yesterday at £20 each! I commented to OH that they commanded £100+ ten years ago and now they cant get £20 for them in a second hand shop.

I have a box of studio pottery bought from a private collector somewhere down near St Ives. I sold a vase for£4.99 and had a number of watchers on a really nice stoneware fruit bowl , but basically nothing else moved. I tried online and through retail outlets.

I also bought a lovely box of hand painted Poole all signed, was offered virtually nothing when I tried to sell individual pieces

All in storage now waiting for the recession to finish

pulliptears

soolin wrote: »

I have a box of studio pottery bought from a private collector somewhere down near St Ives. I sold a vase for£4.99 and had a number of watchers on a really nice stoneware fruit bowl , but basically nothing else moved. I tried online and through retail outlets.

I also bought a lovely box of hand painted Poole all signed, was offered virtually nothing when I tried to sell individual pieces

All in storage now waiting for the recession to finish

I imagine that type of thing will return to favour, but I really don't see people ever wanting the fancy tea sets that were the staple of Stoke's industry ever again. Our charity shops are heaving with them, boxes upon boxes of flowery china dinner sets. The odd 'nice' exception for me is the occasional 70's coffee set which I do think will probably come into their own a little eventually but the rest I really can't see it.

Never did understand the Doulton/Beswick fascination though.

soolin

pulliptears wrote: »

I imagine that type of thing will return to favour, but I really don't see people ever wanting the fancy tea sets that were the staple of Stoke's industry ever again. Our charity shops are heaving with them, boxes upon boxes of flowery china dinner sets. The odd 'nice' exception for me is the occasional 70's coffee set which I do think will probably come into their own a little eventually but the rest I really can't see it.

Never did understand the Doulton/Beswick fascination though.

I've been to two auctions in the past few days- they cannot give tea sets away, such a shame. I do buy some, I usually expect to get at least 12 - 18 sets of cups and saucers and tea plates for around the £5 mark if they are named 'old' pieces and my sister uses them for fund raising where she works.

My son at uni eats of Doulton plates that pre date 1900 and pre date them getting the 'Royal' bit to their name. A full dinner service cost less than a set of 4 plates from Ikea- and as he was on a budget it seemed a better option.

My cat drinks water from a Suzie Cooper plate (bought in a mixed lot) .

Makes me sad to see the beautiful old patterns being thrown away, even the slightly more modern stuff like midwinter or Meakin is struggling to sell and only last month the auctioneer took only £5 for poole cream and brown coffee set. She did get £8 though for a Portmeiron Phoenix set wish I wish I'd bought as it was very retro.

As for the ornaments, the Doulton ladies have lost about 75% of their value, and as for stuff like Capi De Monte the auction houses won't even take it in now.

pulliptears

soolin wrote: »

I've been to two auctions in the past few days- they cannot give tea sets away, such a shame. I do buy some, I usually expect to get at least 12 - 18 sets of cups and saucers and tea plates for around the £5 mark if they are named 'old' pieces and my sister uses them for fund raising where she works.

My son at uni eats of Doulton plates that pre date 1900 and pre date them getting the 'Royal' bit to their name. A full dinner service cost less than a set of 4 plates from Ikea- and as he was on a budget it seemed a better option.

My cat drinks water from a Suzie Cooper plate (bought in a mixed lot) .

Makes me sad to see the beautiful old patterns being thrown away, even the slightly more modern stuff like midwinter or Meakin is struggling to sell and only last month the auctioneer took only £5 for poole cream and brown coffee set. She did get £8 though for a Portmeiron Phoenix set wish I wish I'd bought as it was very retro.

As for the ornaments, the Doulton ladies have lost about 75% of their value, and as for stuff like Capi De Monte the auction houses won't even take it in now.

I have a few sets in the loft myself, nothing I'd use (bit too flowery for me!) but the sentimentality of them keeps me holding on to them I guess.
My Mum was a lithographer for Churchill, my Gran a modeller for Sylvac, my Grandad was a famed 'saggar makers bottom knocker' hehe. You'd be hard pressed to find a job in the industry locally now, other than the ridiculous thing we have going for Emma Bridgewater where people with more money than sense flock to the shop to pay £20 for a mug :eek: