WAISTEL COOPER SELLS FOR £3500 HAMMER PRICE

by **philpot** November 29th 2020, 8:41 am

https://live.adampartridge.co.uk/m/lot-details/index/catalog/212/lot/111193?url=%2Fm%2Fview-auctions%2Fcatalog%2Fid%2F212%3Fpage%3D9

https://pin.it/2tYs4aN

Its interesting to see the wider Studio Pottery market breaking into new price territory. Waistel Cooper has always been a very good and very interesting potter in the sort of slightly Hans Coper territory. His work has never ever been dirt cheap, knocking around couple to several hundred £££s for many years. But this sort of price is new for his work. What with Buyer's commission, Artist resale rights, and Online platform usage premium you are getting up to well over £4000 final cost There was also a very interesting chat on the Facebook British Studio Pottery site with the person who actually bought the piece. A gallery owner in North Devon with a great passion for Cooper's work.

Equally, this is a really beautiful piece.

by **NaomiM** November 29th 2020, 10:37 am

I think if you like Cooper’s work, and appreciate his links with Hans Coper, then this is one of the very best examples of his you could buy. But I think Collectors with smaller items by Cooper may be disappointed if they think their little vase or whatever is now suddenly worth a lot more. I suspect we’ll see the chancers putting them on eBay with £300-£900 price tags

by **studio-pots** November 29th 2020, 1:21 pm

Philpot is correct that it was bought by Tim Williams, who has recently opened a gallery in Lynton. He has dealt in mainly paintings of various periods that he likes and he has also been an art valuer for an auction house for a number of years.

He contacted me over the summer, as he had noticed on the "20th Century Forum" that I had a catalogue of Waistel's retrospective exhibition at Manchester City Art Galleries that was held in 1993/4 and wondered if I had one for sale. I didn't but I scanned mine for him and sent it via email.

This did subsequently lead to me selling him some pieces of Waistel's work at more modest prices than this one, which he collected from me. We had a long conversation and because he loved Waistel's work and the new gallery is near to Cullbone and Purlock, where Waistel spent much of his career, his plan is to become the place to go for his work. So it is a long term plan.

I have helped Tim to advertise his gallery to pottery collectors is a small way, because he is really known for paintings, but I have to say that I admire him for putting his money where is mouth is in this way. It's something that I would never have been brave enough to do.

by **studio-pots** November 29th 2020, 1:26 pm

He was the underbidder on the Waistel that sold for £2000 at the Maak auction on the 19th November, which was the previous "World Record Price" for a piece of his work.

by **NaomiM** November 29th 2020, 2:32 pm

Interesting that there must be two exceptionally keen collectors of Coopers work to push the prices up. Begs the question, who else is buying it and for how long? As soon as the other one drops out of the market then prices for Coopers work are likely to fall significantly.
But for someone dealing in paintings, studio pottery must seem exceptionally cheap. I hope Tim realises that most pottery Collectors probably wouldn’t be able to afford paintings so no point trying to push prices up. Different market, imo

by **studio-pots** November 29th 2020, 3:37 pm

NaomiM wrote:Interesting that there must be two exceptionally keen collectors of Coopers work to push the prices up. Begs the question, who else is buying it and for how long? As soon as the other one drops out of the market then prices for Coopers work are likely to fall significantly.
But for someone dealing in paintings, studio pottery must seem exceptionally cheap. I hope Tim realises that most pottery Collectors probably wouldn’t be able to afford paintings so no point trying to push prices up. Different market, imo

I did tell him, in very similar terms about "pottery collectors". However, there are new people buying pots these days that are not like we "old school" buyers.

Now that Tim has embarked on this strategy then he must be thinking that he is in it for the long term and he can't/won't drop out. If we assume that there is only one other person bidding then them dropping out just means Tim buys pots at auction cheaper. However, publicity like this might get the new collectors interested and prices will continue to rise.

by **NaomiM** November 29th 2020, 3:58 pm

I’m my experience, publicity like this brings all the pots out the back of the cupboard and floods the market, pushing prices down. There are some potters like Wallwork and Maltby who’s prices continue to steadily rise because there are a lot of keen collectors, but Cooper is a bit of a marmite potter, imo, and he produced a lot of very similar work. You could build a collection of a dozen different Maltbys and Wallworks but a couple of Coopers would be sufficient representation of his work and style. The collectible pieces will always be the one offs and unusual shapes made in very limited numbers, like this particular vase, but his appeal rides on the back of Coper and Rie; he’s a poor man’s Coper

by **studio-pots** November 29th 2020, 4:36 pm

NaomiM wrote:I’m my experience, publicity like this brings all the pots out the back of the cupboard and floods the market, pushing prices down. There are some potters like Wallwork and Maltby who’s prices continue to steadily rise because there are a lot of keen collectors, but Cooper is a bit of a marmite potter, imo, and he produced a lot of very similar work. You could build a collection of a dozen different Maltbys and Wallworks but a couple of Coopers would be sufficient representation of his work and style. The collectible pieces will always be the one offs and unusual shapes made in very limited numbers, like this particular vase, but his appeal rides on the back of Coper and Rie; he’s a poor man’s Coper

If we were talking about Emmanuel Cooper rather than Waistel Cooper then all of what you said would be correct, except that he is a very poor man's Rie. However, his prices haven't gone down.

by **NaomiM** November 29th 2020, 6:52 pm

Emmanuel Cooper’s prices are bolstered by the wide range of glaze colours he used. Waistrel Cooper’s pots are brown Shrugs

by **denbydump** November 30th 2020, 12:47 am

I have some blue.....

https://www.20thcenturyforum.com/t4075p25-waistel-cooper

by **philpot** November 30th 2020, 8:55 am

The interesting fact is that Waistel Cooper's career is one of two halves.
30 odd years in the Culbone/Porlock area, and the final 20 odd years in Penzance. The first half produced the somewhat Coper style work. These rather sombre narrow colour and form palette matt pieces. Whereas the pieces he made in Penzance are completely different. Quite OTT, exuberant unusual, far more Arty in a way. You hardly ever see the Penzance pieces on the market, and they never sold well when they have been, but personally I rather liked them. Waistel Cooper's work is not really unknown tho. For years it has bounced around the bottom end of the auction market in the sub £500 range at most.
Its the same story really. It does not take many people to make a market. Even with recent price rises most of the studio pottery market prices are dirt cheap compared with contemporary.
Art. Equally it does not take many people to drop a market when it is small. John Maltby pottery pieces have mostly stalled in price, while his 'sculptural' work that is starting to move up. The Partridge sale had a big one go for £1650, and Maak had a similarly large piece go for £2000 hammer prices of course. There were several Gordon Baldwin pieces in the Partridge sale that did not sell, and he has been a banker of a couple of ££££ thousand at auction for a long time.
Given the present situation of desperate economic uncertainty and virtually negative interest rates, one can probably expect more hot money to push the studio pottery market up. To the really rich its still just chicken feed money they are paying.

by **studio-pots** November 30th 2020, 5:40 pm

I visited him when he lived in Penzance and bought a couple of vases from him, which were very white with colourful internal glazes. He also had a number of large pieces of sculpture that he wasn't really interested in selling at the time, as he wanted an exhibition of them to take place "in the future". I spent a very pleasant morning with him at his home by the harbour.

by **studio-pots** November 30th 2020, 5:42 pm

Going back to Tim, who bought the Waistel in the thread title, when I mentioned his commitment his reply was, "No one can doubt my commitment though my sanity is up for debate".

When he visited me, he did talk about writing a book about Waistel, and he tells me that he has already started.

by **philpot** December 8th 2020, 9:53 am

£500 for a 14 cm high Waistel Cooper pot on Ebay yesterday. Probably twice the price it would have got previously.

by **ppcollectables** December 15th 2020, 1:32 pm

Mallams auction today, getting good prices for studio pottery ( they usually do ) lot 134, 3 waistel cooper vases just went for £1800 hammer - they were around 5/6" high and very nice but my bid was way off.

by **philpot** December 16th 2020, 10:46 am

Had a look at Mallams as well. There was a blue Alan Caiger lustre bowl that went circa £2000 as well. I wonder if it the same gent who is boosting these Waistel Cooperprices? If so. it is somewhat of a sharp bubble. I wonder if it will last?

by **studio-pots** December 16th 2020, 11:00 am

philpot wrote:Had a look at Mallams as well. There was a blue Alan Caiger lustre bowl that went circa £2000 as well. I wonder if it the same gent who is boosting these Waistel Cooperprices? If so. it is somewhat of a sharp bubble. I wonder if it will last?

Different gents I believe, as "Tim the Waistel" has shown no specific interest in any other studio pottery yet.

However, I did see a large air freight box within an outer cardboard box on its way to the States....... with a Waistel inside, carefully packed by Tim last week. Sooner him than me, I thought.

by **studio-pots** December 18th 2020, 8:48 am

ppcollectables wrote:Mallams auction today, getting good prices for studio pottery ( they usually do ) lot 134, 3 waistel cooper vases just went for £1800 hammer - they were around 5/6" high and very nice but my bid was way off.

I think it illustrates what can happen in a relatively small marketplace, compared to the art market in general, when just one person begins to buy bullishly at auction.

by metadadaist December 22nd 2020, 2:31 am

My ears must've been burning! I wish I could take all the credit, but it takes two people to make an auction. If only the market *would* get flooded with Waistel Cooper's so I could get some at an affordable price. These are not pottery collectors driving up the price. These are modernist collectors. You can't take pottery out of its wider context. If you pick up a copy of Modern Interiors from the 50s or 60s, whose pots are in rooms with Le Corbusier furniture, Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore sculptures or Mondrian paintings: Waistel's and Hans's. Six months ago you could buy a Waistel for a few hundred quid, but everything else in that Modern Interiors room is tens/hundreds of thousands, millions... a market where one potter makes £300k and his closest rival makes £300 is a market that is either broken or people haven't woken up yet. Regrettably I didn't win the three at Mallams (underbid), nor that smart one on ebay but only because I forgot to bid... that one on ebay was an important pot from 1956/57 originally retailed by Heals, so £500 was an absolute bargain!

If you think all Waistel Cooper's look the same then you've not seen many Waistel Cooper's! His career can be separated into six or seven periods, and each period is wildly different but with a coherent aesthetic thread: modernism. Waistel did many pots in many colours! Some of them are Marmite, but some of them are universally astoundingly beautiful. The guy was an absolute genius and for him to be dismissed as a 'poor mans Coper' is an insult to his groundbreaking work and legacy.

by **studio-pots** December 22nd 2020, 2:29 pm

I think with all types of art, connections or more important than talent, and Hans Coper, after his death, had better connections than Waistel ever had, when he was alive.

Waistel's work did appear in a book by Lesley Jackson that came out in 1991 entitled, The New Look Design in the Fifties, when that was my main area of dealing. That together with the retrospective exhibition of his work at Manchester City Art Galleries in 1993/4 did give him publicity but not really in the Studio Pottery collecting world, but, as today, in the Interior Design/Art markets. However, back then pottery didn't have the kudos that it has in those markets today.

Therefore I wouldn't bet against Waistel's pots continue to increase in price.

On a personal front, I wouldn't have considered comparing the work of Hans Coper and Waistel Cooper, as there is little overlap and to me, Waistel was really a one off, which always makes recognition difficult.

by **NaomiM** December 22nd 2020, 2:58 pm

£3500 is probably worth it for a pot like that; it is comparable to Maltby and Wallwork’s stoneware. But pushing the market to new highs will risk a fall if there are only a very few collectors with deep pockets. Maltby and Wallwork have a large and devoted following which keeps prices gradually rising. Otherwise you risk the same fate as Val Barry; well thought of in her time but now largely forgotten.

by **philpot** December 22nd 2020, 3:45 pm

After Val Barry's estate sale last year there was a lot more of her pottery market on the market, and more interest in it.
Equally interesting discussion over Waistel Cooper. I have probably seen more than most people of his work. It has always been a steady ingredient of studio pottery sales over the years, and it generally sold regularly, generally in he lower mid range of prices. So it is just not true he was unnoticed.
What is true, is that the Interior Designer/ Art market discovered how cheap as chips a good deal of the Studio pottery market was. Hence the substantial rise in prices over the last few years But in general the rise has been in the staples of studio pottery auctions who have been around for many years.
The first wave of price increases was in the vaguely Coper/Rie area. Hence the sharp increases in Emmanuel Cooper and John Ward over the past few years. Since then the market has started looking foe others. Mary Rogers prices have risen sharply quite recently. The Waistel Cooper phase looks exactly like that.

You only have to look at the Saleroom.https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/price-guide?pgsearchterm=waistel+cooper&sortTerm=DateAsc

by **studio-pots** December 22nd 2020, 3:48 pm

NaomiM wrote:£3500 is probably worth it for a pot like that; it is comparable to Maltby and Wallwork’s stoneware. But pushing the market to new highs will risk a fall if there are only a very few collectors with deep pockets. Maltby and Wallwork have a large and devoted following which keeps prices gradually rising. Otherwise you risk the same fate as Val Barry; well thought of in her time but now largely forgotten.

The Art Market, where it's how many millions an item makes, flourishes on just a few collectors with deep pockets. Studio ceramics in recent years has entered that Market at the bottom end and so what old studio pottery collectors/dealers do or think is irrelevant to what will happen.

Of course in any market prices can fall but £3500 is just loose change in today's market. Even the quarter of a million paid for the Magdalene Odundo isn't that risky.

by **philpot** December 22nd 2020, 4:30 pm

Studio....can I have some of your loose change please....?? Laughter

by **studio-pots** December 22nd 2020, 4:35 pm

philpot wrote:Studio....can I have some of your loose change please....??

I was reporting on what I see and not suggesting that I was in that league...................... I'm in the queue with you.

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