John Maltby

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmHoxjMxd5I

A superb near half hour Video by the Yew Tree Gallery as a tribute to John Maltby. It has a lot of loan pieces from collectors and is much more than just a selling exhibition Really well worth viewing as it provides a lot of background and details of John Maltby's work.
There is also a hardback book available from the gallery.
There are some adverts at the beginning which you need to get through first.

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A very interesting video, thanks for the link. His large pots looked quite special displayed as they were. I still haven't made my mind up about his sculptures but i know a lot of collectors love them so perhaps the problem is with me. One thing that intrigued me was his liking of the work of artist Breon O'Casey who in turn formed a partnership with the artist Brian Illsley to make jewellery, what struck me were the motifs which appear on some of the jewellery are very similar to those on some Maltby pots as are
the dangling affixes on his kings. I will order a copy of the book.

Johm Malby and Breon O'Casey had a joint exhibition at the Devon Guild of Craftsmen in Bovey Tracey ion 2011. So there must have been a definite affinity and friendship between them. I still have the catalogue, and both were tremendorus. Maltby in particular had a large number of big pieces, and the O'Casey paintings were fascinating.

My guess is that John Maltby was quite influenced by Breon O'Casey in his sculptures as there is a striking resemblance in the silver heads sculptures of O'Casey and elements of some of Maltby's sculptures.

We do not seem to have many images of Maltby's later pieces. These are taken from an exhibition more than a decade ago/[url=https://servimg.com/view/15893997/2120][/url

Entitled ROYAL BARGE 35.5 CMS HIGH.

SENTINELS. 43 cms high.

John Malby working in his studio. It is interesting to see the range of parts of pieces in front of him.

https://www.pyramidgallery.com/product-category/artists/john-maltby/

A link to the Pyramid Gallery York, and their tribute to John Maltby. There are 55 images in total of his sculptural work.

I have always found this one fascinating. It touches on a number of parts of John Maltby's life. His father was a fishmonger. He always had a permanent love of St Ives. More important perhaps it is such a Figure full of Joy and Laughter!

Thought I would add this piece to the Maltby thread as it’s stoneshill marked but in my opinion it’s right up there for his figural sculptures….makes me smile anyways which is the whole point

What a gorgeous piece! Early 70's maybe.

He’s a dude…..wife reckons he’s is like a voodoo figure….you can see the influence on his later works already coming through I think….

Surely is this not Lady Godiva? Protesting that she is cold? (arms crossed) If it's a man then he must be very cold if you get my meaning?

Maybe I’m all for fluidity……legs akimbo made me think of a male but lady is also good with me….

The is perfect illustration really of the charm, vitality and humour that John Maltby bought to his work.
When you think he spent several as an apprentice years of 1962/63 with David Leach, you would expect a straight line Leach style potter. But he did such an extraordinary range of work. Collages, Boats, Automatons, sculpture.... I think he did this sort of work in the early 70's. You do not see a great deal of it on the market.
But this piece is so atypical John Maltby. Whacky, humourous and delightful. This one verges on the fully ribald! I envy you!
Given the pieces he made later in life. I wonder if this type of piece was really his first love? But he could never really get a market for them.

I think his domesticwres are a good investment. Dirt cheap - no one wants them - completely ignored but imagine if LR had made a cheap set of standard ware. They won't make thousands or even hundreds but should go up IMO.

To be honest Crawford, his domestic wares are pretty dull. I have had several Stoneshill pieces over the years, and they were actually not very good. There were a whole load of potters doing better work in the Leach tradition.

I know but I still think they will go up in price

Well you can certainly buy it cheap enough! In January a Stonehill coffee pot and teapot went for £10 at East Bristol Auctions.
Equally, prices for John Maltby items have cooled substantially. It might also just have to do with just how large a number of his items come on the market. There are well over 40 items of his for sale at auction in March alone this year.

OK I bought a piece of Alvar Alto glass new for work as they wanted 'decorations' and asked us to pick- it was £95 new 5 years ago. One sold for approx. £250 recently. I was impressed, but when I told them they were meh. All the other crap people bought from the internet is now worthless, but unless my price rise was worth thousands they were not interested. Meh they said.

X2+ your money in ANY NEW item in 5 years is impressive IMO - we are not talking vintage LR or Damien Hirst here - it's new glassware in a white box. They wanted decorations for the office.

Same with JM domestic ware - you won't retire on it but I still say it's undervalued.