paul rice at adam partridge auctions

I agree , DeWall would make a good window dresser

de Wall throws Grayson claims to have never tried the wheel

Some time ago De Waal was invited as a practising potter to give his opinion on a pot by William De Morgan , he started by saying what a wonderful pot this was so thinly potted etc, then carried on about the poetry of the piece .He was clearly out of his depth as the ruby lustred bowl would have been a bought in as a commercial blank at this period then decorated, De Morgan never really cared to much about the fineness of potting it was the shape that counted for his designs ,in my opinion De Waal talks a good talk and people get sucked in. I realise De Morgan is not strictly 20th century although his pottery did linger on into the first decade ,so if it's ok i will upload a piece of his .

not okay but perfectly within the rules (joking)

dantheman wrote:get off the fence John

I know too much about him and have heard stories from people involved in ceramics around the world, which means there is not enough space for me to jump off the fence into - it crowded on the de Wally side.

Do we have a Tittle-Tattle thread? If not why not?

we have a mods area for that

philpot wrote:I was not really thinking about their personal qualities as such, but more the public face they   present that gives them the fame of being a celebrity.

I agree entirely and, I think it is even worse, when, as is the case with Eddy de Wally, that the initial publicity was because he used a PR company to make up stuff about him. For example, a school friend of Eddy's told me that after reading an article, which basically said that once there was a studio potter called Bernard Leach and then nothing happened until Eddy came along, he spoke to Eddy and asked him how he could say such a load of crap. His reply was I didn't say it, my PR company made it up.

both those potters are celebrity potters not much work on the market and not for most of our purses

Hi studio - pots, ref, Bill Ismay ,when i referred to his yearly quota of pots it was this quote ''I've restrained myself to 47 pots this year ( inside my ration) last year it was 60 but i'm still an addict''. That quote i understood to mean that in his mind he had a yearly quota to fill.

croker wrote:Hi studio - pots, ref, Bill Ismay ,when i referred  to his yearly quota of pots it was this quote ''I've restrained myself to 47 pots this year ( inside my ration) last year it was 60 but i'm still an addict''. That quote i  understood  to mean  that in his mind he had a yearly quota to fill.

I wasn't trying to criticise what you said but wasn't aware of the actual quote. Now that you have expanded on the quote, I think what you wrote and my reply fit pretty well together. The thing that really restricted him were funds but he wasn't like some collectors that would buy cheaper pots so that they could have more pots in his collection. From dealing with him, he bought what was in his mind the best pot in the exhibition and would never, for example, buy 3 smaller pots instead from an exhibition that would cost the same as the larger one that he bought. He also didn't necessarily go for the biggest pot either but I was told by a couple that lived behind the Harlequin Gallery of the time that he came to visit with a massive Coper spade form in his shopping bag.

I can't agree that De Waal that has attained celebrity status ,a lot of people would be familiar with Grayson Perry but very few outside of the arts world would know who De WAAL was. He may be a good author and a good speaker but i think certain 'artists' can talk their way into the pottery elite whereas others like Coper let their pots speak for them.

croker wrote:I can't agree that De Waal that has attained celebrity status ,a lot of people would be familiar with Grayson Perry but very few outside of the arts world would know who De WAAL was. He may be a good author and a good speaker but i think certain 'artists' can talk their way into the pottery elite  whereas others like Coper let their pots speak for them.

I have found his writing adequate and I never finished his Hare book. The first time that I came across him was reading reviews that he had written of Harlequin Gallery exhibitions (before I took over the gallery). These to me seemed to be taking digs at the potter rather than reviewing the exhibition fairly. At that time, I had no idea that he made pots.

In my view he is a tedious, pretentious speaker, as you appeared to have noticed from you statement in an earlier post.

He became known, not by any of these means or his work, but purely by paid for untruths or, at best, half-truths produced by the PR company that he employed to make him famous. I did hear from one source that his mother had some connection to that PR company but I do not know if that is true. The other thing that helped was that he was "well connected" having been at public school then Trinity Hall, Cambridge; his father being the Dean of Canterbury Cathedral and his mother an author. One of his school friends told me that he always liked to boast about who had visited his home over the school holidays and on one occasion, after his friend had rolled off a few relatives, he took great pleasure in telling him that the Pope had stayed with them.

I thought the sale at Partridge's today went very much as expected with a lot of the better lots overpriced and unsold ,one highlight was the Jennifer Lee vase which sold well but i was surprised at the low price the Constantinidis pipe form made when compared to the recent result at Maak. I found it strange that Adam Partridge on the rostrum said ignore the estimates as most things are here to sell, normally the lower estimate reflects the reserve but some of the items in this sale sold well below the low estimate.

He would have know fully well how it as going to go because of the 'interest' and commission bid coming in before the auction started.

Are the sale prices up on tinternet yet?

I don't understand. Surely the 50 - 80 low end stuff that had a bid of 40 had no reserve? And did sell?

I think that some items were 'very' flexible in their reserves ,some had no reserves at all and some 20% discretion or so. I get the impression that on the higher end items  he was just chancing  his luck and didn't mind taking them back if they were not sold. The yellow Alison Britton had absolutely no chance as this piece has been around and was in one of his exhibitions a couple of years ago and didn't sell .

..and a few deals are done afterwards when the bidder approaches the auctioneer after it's finished... 'what does he want'