See a slideshow of Blue Children patterns here.

Fact is, not a lot is known about this particularly distinctive brand of Royal Doulton pottery, but faced with a collection of five pieces of the stuff ranged attractively prior to their auction, it’s hard to ignore.

So, ever keen to expand my knowledge, I spoke to the owner who had decided to start to thin out his collection in an upcoming sale.

He told me the five pieces represented the less important 25 per cent of what he owned.

If anyone could tell me about Blue Children, it was him.

But he couldn’t, but he did hand me a copy of Doulton expert Louise Irvine’s book on the pottery manufacturer’s so-called “Series Ware” (published by Richard Dennis, 1986).

Oddly listed under “Games and Pastimes”, Page 51 gives a list of 24 scenes or titles of Blue Children patterns, the names of which are self-explanatory: Two girls sheltering under umbrella; Two girls draping daisy chains round a dog’s neck; Girl with doll talking to a frog and so on.

Interestingly, it seemed like the collector had discovered another, previously not listed, pattern: “Girl in landscape with plate and teaset”. But the handwritten addition was followed by a question mark, so the jury is still out on that one.

But that explains why his was attracted to it enough to amass such a huge collection. He has two daughters, now grown up and with children of their own, and that’s why. Plus his wife really likes it.

Why was he selling? No doubt to buy more, better examples.

According to Louise Irvine, the Blue Children series was introduced By Royal Doulton in the 1890s and discontinued by 1930.

The relatively short production run means supplies are limited, which is always an ingredient of a sought-after collectable.

The variety of shapes to which the patterns were applied is large, is another plus.

They include plates for display racks; oval and round wall plaques; the Gower umbrella stand; Aubrey toilet set; Sheriton toilet set; Carlton fern pot; Bamboo flower pot; jugs in the Breda, Chatsworth; Arno and Corinth shapes; Ball teapot; jardiniere and pedestal and various vases.

Additionaly, McVitie and Price adopted the pattern for a biscuit jar advertising their product, as did Royal Doulton for another biscuit jar, the Regent shape, both of which must have been popular with children, at least judging by my own two who seem addicted to chocolate digestives.

Louise Irvine goes on to add that although mostly printed, the scenes had additional background detail painted by hand.

Occasionally the artists responsible signed their work although this practice seems to have ceased by 1902.

Recorded signatures are J. Boulton, M. Brown, P. Curnock, C. Jackson, F. Jones, Kelsall, A. E, Simpson and “Yomans” (sic).

And there you have it. That seems to be the extent of knowledge about Blue Children series ware, although if any reader knows more, both my new collector friend and I would love to hear it.

The picture shows a jardinière decorated with three children watching Tinkerbell. It’s worth £150-200

YOU’VE SEEN them at countless car boot sales, and you’ve been embarrassed when you’ve  asked the stallholder how much he wants for the naff set of NatWest piggy banks, the SylvaC bunnies or the preserve pots shaped like onions modelled with faces on the sides.

Click here for a 20th Century Ceramics slideshow

But it’s okay. Help is at hand in the shape of the latest glossy hardback to come from the stable of the Antique Collectors’ Club, entitled "Starting to Collect 20th Century Ceramics". Author Andrew Casey is an acknowledged expert on the subject and his book has been produced specially with the novice collector in mind.

From the Lord of the Rings figures from the Middle Earth Series produced by Royal Doulton in 1980 to the Homemaker designs made in the 1950s for Woolworth’s by Ridgway Potteries, Mr Casey’s book is not just an exercise in "Do people really collect those?", but

also an excuse for the people who do to carry on regardless.

After all, no one was harmed in the process of calling objects made yesterday antiques and collectables (except of course the uninitiated). If you buy or sell 20th century pottery at antiques fairs, fleamarkets or car boot sales, then this book should be your bible.

For example, did you know that there are collectors who would kill for a rare piece of Roland Rat gift ware pottery? No, me neither.

To the purist, such as BBC Antiques Roadshow specialist and much loved character Henry Sandon, who wrote the foreword to the book, it is something of anathema to learn that 20th century ceramics are among the fastest growing field of collecting. But it’s true, and we’ll have to live with it.

Having watched a sale last week in which a collection of Beswick farm animals made eye-watering prices, it seems today’s collectors are more interested in kitsch than they are in fine Georgian silver or antique furniture.

As Mr Casey points out, the market for "collectables" — the preferred phrase for 20th century items rather than "antiques — has blossomed over the last 20 years, egged on by television programmes and Internet auctions.

Now, the stuff chucked out by our parents or blown to smithereens in the Blitz is the new Meissen, Chelsea and Bow.

Starting to Collect 20th Century Ceramics is a compendium of manufacturers in Britain, Europe and America. Many of the names are old favourites but there are plenty whom collectors have yet to focus and capitalise upon.

Take William Adams Ltd. The Adams family started manufacturing pottery in 1779 in Tunstall, Stoke-on-Trent. In the 20th century, the firm produced a wide variety of tea, coffee and dinner wares that are highly collectable.

Ironically however, despite a strong interest in Susie Cooper pottery, the Meadowlands and Inspiration patterns she designed for Adams in circa 1983-84 have yet to be recognised and as such might be useful investment.

Or Barretts of Staffordshire Ltd. A relatively unknown pottery, Barretts was once owned by Great Universal Stores but subsequently the subject of a management buy-out in 1986.

In 1992, Barretts purchased the Royal Stafford company in receivership and the following year the companies were amalgamated to become known as Royal Stafford Tableware, who produced exclusive high-end dinner services for such stores as Ralph Lauren. The products are another one to watch.

Pottery by John Beswick Ltd is already priced beyond the reach of most but in contrast, the firm of E. Brain and Co was formed in 1855 at the Foley Works in Fenton, Stoke-On-Trent.

Foley’s bone china was the tableware of choice for the upper middle classes, but Andrew Casey advises collectors to look out for the small range of Brain fancies such as dishes from the late 1950s decorated with a whimsical images by Maureen Tanner.

Several pages of the book concentrate on the aforementioned Susie Cooper wares and it is clear there is mileage in the old girl yet.

The author suggests collectors keep a lookout for her Curlew shapes, the Art Deco designs from the early 30s such as Seagull, Panorama and Homestead and her Leaping Deer and Angel Fish figural table centres reissued by Wedgwood in 2002.

The Bourne family established the famous pottery in Denby, Derbyshire, in 1809 when they produced salt-glaze stoneware.

In the 1960s, every trendy home had a Denby dinner service but Andrew Casey advises collectors to seek their kitchenware such as Cottage Blue and Manor Green designed by Donald Gilbert in the 1930s.

Collectors are apparently also particularly keen on the rare designs and patterns such as the Cheviot Wares from 1956.

Even Royal Crown Derby, one of this country’s most significant and enduring companies has its collectables.

Founded in 1876, Derby competed with some of the finest English and Continental porcelain manufacturers and in 1890 was awarded a Royal warrant by Queen Victoria.

Shunning the traditional, apparently today’s collectors are drawn to the animal and bird paperweights designed by Robert Jefferson in the 1980s and skilfully painted pieces by such artists as Albert Gregory and Cuthbert Gresley.

A.J. Wilkinson Limited is best known today for Clarice Cliff’s Bizarre ware and if you can afford it, you probably don’t need any help from Andrew Casey.

However, for the less well heeled, he recommends collectors should also look out for the less well-known designs by John Butler, whilst American collectors are apparently eager to purchase a traditional landscape printed dinnerware with the Royal Staffordshire mark known as Tonquin.

I could go on … and on, but space precludes it. I recommend you buy the book. It’s a good read and highly informative. It’s also well illustrated with a host of colour photographs which is a real boon to spotting the bargains at car boot sales.

For the ceramics collector interested in new antiques, it would make a cracking Christmas present. Just don’t be too hacked off remembering what was on your dinner table when you were a child.

Starting to Collect 20th Century Ceramics is priced at £14.95. Contact The Antique Collectors’ Club on 01394 389950.

by Christopher Proudlove©

Ever eager to keep these columns current, I felt compelled to find something to do with Easter. Inspiration came following a local auction sale in which this trio of pottery Bunnykins figures were offered. In the event, they were knocked down for a staggering total of £2,810. If nothing else, the sale proved there is no upper limit to the prices some hard-bitten collectors are prepared to pay for Royal Doulton rarities.

The bunny rabbit, whose propensity for breeding is legendary, has long served as a fertility symbol for the Spring. Bunnykins figures came from the fertile imagination of a young woman whose father, Cuthbert Bailey, happened to be the managing director of Royal Doulton. As a child, Barbara Vernon Bailey had filled sketchbooks with drawings of the countryside, and of the animals kept by her four brothers and two sisters including pigs, cows, horses and ferrets, as well as the more cuddly dogs, cats and guinea-pigs. But it was the wild rabbits, brought to life by her father’s exciting and sometimes frightening bedtime stories, that really delighted her. When, in 1934, Cuthbert Bailey hit on a new line of children’s nurseryware, he turned to Barbara for illustrations rather than a professional artist.

However, by then Barbara had joined the Augustine Order and become Sister Mary Barbara in an enclosed Sussex convent. The prioress was far from happy with the idea. Fortunately, permission was granted, albeit reluctantly and on condition that no profit should be made from the project for either the artist or the convent. It was an unfortunate demand, denying the Order considerable royalties which could have been put to good use.

Nevertheless, in a scene lovingly lampooned in the figurine Sister Mary Barbara Bunnykins, Barbara worked late into the night from the light of a candle, churning out dozens of whimsical sketches drawing on her childhood memories and centred on Mr Rabbit who bore a distinct likeness to her father with his round glasses and puffing a pipe. Barbara’s illustrations of rabbits gardening, bathing, dancing and cooking were an instant success and within a year, Doulton’s Bunnykins pottery was in nurseries around the world. By the time of the Second World War, there were 66 different Bunnykins scenes decorating plates, cups, sugar bowls, jam pots and other crockery.

Barbara ceased drawing when her convent teaching duties meant she was too busy to continue and her designs had been withdrawn by1952, but other designers continued in the growing Bunnykins tradition. Doulton’s Hubert Light and later Walter Hayward adapted her drawings and then the latter began to create his own busier version of the Bunnykins world. Colin Twinn subsequently designed Bunnykins scenes from 1987 until the mid-1990s and Frank Endersby took over in 1995. Barbara Vernon died in 2003 aged 92.

Bunnykins figurines were added to the traditional tableware in 1939 with six figures being produced for a very brief time. They were modelled by Charles Noke, Doulton’s most important artist and are so rare today that only the most serious collector seeks them out. However, in 1972, soon after Doulton took over the Beswick factory, a second generation of nine Bunnykins figurines were produced and for the first 10 years, they reflected Walter Hayward’s tableware designs, ranging from Artist Bunnykins to Sleeptime Bunnykins. They were modelled by Albert Hallam. In 1980, Harry Sales, the design manager at Beswick, took over the Bunnykins range and realised the potential of appealing to the adult collector. Suddenly the bunnies were jogging, playing the guitar, blasting off for the moon and in the late 1980s various limited edition colourways and specially commissioned Bunnykins models were produced.

It is the pre-1950s Bunnykins designs, especially those that carry Barbara Vernon’s signature, that are in most demand today. Values of many of these early pieces are now in the £50 to £100 bracket, but rarer pieces such as large jugs or teapots can fetch £200 or £300 or more. The vast majority of more recent Bunnykins ware is more affordable and can be picked up at fleamarkets and car boot sales in the £10 to £35 price range. There is an international collectors’ club which offers priority notice of new issues to Royal Doulton enthusiasts.
For further reading, the definitive guide to collecting Bunnykins figures is Royal Doulton Collectables (formerly Royal Doulton Bunnykins) by Jean Dale and Louise Irvine, the fourth edition of which was published in January this year. It contains information on 36 new shape/pattern combinations which have been added to the pricing tables and 20 new pattern combinations, several in the “rare” pattern category. The guide is available from all good booksellers.

Pictures show, top:
Auction pricebusters, left to right: Mother Bunnykins, sold for £900; Reggie Bunnykins, sold for £1350 and Farmer Bunnykins, which sold for £560 despite having a broken and re-stuck right ear

Below, left to right:
Rare early Bunnykins figures produced in 1939, clockwise, top: Mother, Farmer, Mary, Reggie Freddie and Billy. The teapot in the centre of the picture is particularly rare and is worth £400-600

Sister Mary Barbara Bunnykins. Barbara worked late into the night from the light of a candle, churning out dozens of whimsical sketches drawing on her childhood memories

Recognising the gift potential of the figurines, Royal Doulton make a range of Bunnykins modeled to reflect their professions. Picture here, left to right are Plumber, Chef and Teacher

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by Christopher Proudlove©

It’s a long time since I watched a Punch and Judy show. It was probably 15 or 20 years ago on the prom with the young apprentices at Llandudno, North Wales. Happy days.

I remember it well. We were on holiday and I recall being amused to see a tiny mouse, unobserved by the rest of the crowd, snuffling around and snatching the odd crumb dropped by lunchtime picnickers.

The memories came flooding back, as they say, when I spotted the amusing little pottery group illustrated here.

It was made at Doulton in Lambeth, South London, in the days before the firm’s move to the Staffordshire Potteries, when individuality and modeller talent was recognised and rewarded.

The group comes from the whimsical mind of George Tinworth (1843-1913. It’s called Play Goers and shows a family of mice watching a Punch and Judy show to the musical accompaniment of a one-mouse band.

The first Doulton sculptor to model the creature for the company, Tinworth knew how to bring out the comedic best in a mouse.

A more unlikely a subject for one of Doulton’s leading ceramic sculptors to make would be hard to imagine.

Most days would find Tinworth immersed in creating massive stoneware panels depicting biblical or historical scenes.

Examples can be seen in a number of cathedrals around the world, most notable among which are those in York Minster.

However, he is reported as having complained of being unable to finish such pieces satisfactorily “with a tired mind”.

His jokey “humoresques”, as he called them, showing animals in human situations, was his way of finding light relief.

Consequently, they were produced in small numbers and without documentation except for Tinworth’s easily identified ‘GT’ monogram which many of them bear. Today they can make often staggering prices.

He modelled mice either singly as paperweights and chessmen, or in groups that tell a story.

For example, a menu holder, first produced at Doulton in 1885, is designed as an apple stall, with the mouse attendant asleep while another quietly steals an apple.

In Tea Time Scandal, a mouse tea party is in progress, while Menagerie is a clock case featuring 19 mice all engaged in various circus pursuits including a wheel of fortune and a shooting gallery.

Another shows mice in a rowing boat, made by Tinworth in about 1885 and called ‘Cockneys at Brighton’. While one rows, another plays a concertina, much to the amusement of the young mice in the prow and the dolphin following alongside.

Tinworth was born in 1843, in the most unlikeliest of circumstances to have produced a gifted potter.

The son of an inebriate wheelwright, he was brought up in the squalid surroundings of Walworth in south east London, the only one of four sons to survive past infancy.

Schooling was negligible, but his Nonconformist mother brought him up on the Bible and taught him to read and recite the scriptures.

Among his boyhood jobs was working at a fireworks factory, where an incident with a leaking bag of gunpowder on a bus almost put an end to his young life.

By the time he was 16, with two jobs already behind him, he began working for his father, secretly using the tools to practise wood-carving.

At 19, and after pawning his overcoat to pay the fees, Tinworth joined evening classes at Lambeth School of Art, under the brilliant headmaster John Sparkes.

His father was deliberately kept ignorant of the boy’s attendance, and Tinworth’s progress there was exceptional.

He won a school prize at an annual show with a carved panel of Christ being mocked by the soldiers, and after three years, in 1864, he was admitted to the Schools of the Royal Academy to study fulltime.

To do so he had to ask his father’s permission to attend. Grudgingly the old man agreed, on condition the boy worked for three or four hours before breakfast and again in the evening after school.

Two years, later Tinworth had won a number of medals and exhibited at the Royal Academy.

At about this time Henry Doulton, whose father John had founded the Lambeth Pottery, was working closely with Sparkes and the School of Art in developing his family’s business.

Until then Doulton had concentrated on industrial ceramics, bathroom fittings and saltglaze drainage pipes.

The business had earned a fortune for its founder and in a move as much motivated by philanthropy as further profit making, John Doulton decided to diversify into arty decorative ceramics.

Coincidentally, Sparkes was growing concerned that Tinworth’s talent was being wasted working in a wheelwright’s shop.

The obvious happened as if preordained: by the end of 1866 Sparkes had been instrumental not only in persuading Doulton to offer Tinworth a job, but also in coaxing the latter to accept, even though neither truly knew what each had to offer the other.

The result was a less than auspicious start, modelling the Gothic decoration on the outsides of water filters – a Doulton standard product.

However, with the encouragement of first Sparkes and later the architect Edward Cresy, writer John Ruskin and eventually Henry Doulton himself, Tinworth went on to become one of the company’s leading artists.

At first, he modelled several large terracotta medallions based on Greek and Sicilian designs. This was followed, in 1874, by him exhibiting three large panels at the Royal Academy and a further eight smaller examples the following year.

By 1894, he claimed to have produced at least 500 important biblical panels and countless other smaller examples, as well as busts, statues, figure groups vases, jugs, tankards and vases. His output continued almost unabated until his sudden death in 1913.

Tinworth’s “humoresques” first appeared in the 1870s and many of them are unique. Others, however, were duplicated in small quantities from moulds, but all were finished by him individually before adding his incised initials.

Perhaps his most famous figures produced in this way, after his mice, are his boys and girls playing musical instruments, now extremely rare and sought after.

Pictures show, top: Play Goers – this charming Tinworth mouse group is modelled as a Punch and Judy show with attendant mice in green, buff, brown and blue glazed, the base has the usual impressed “GT” monogram and rose mark, and is inscribed with “LC”, an assistant’s initials. The piece measures 5½ inches in height and has a saleroom estimate of £1,500-2,500 ($2,700-4,500)

Below, left to right: Tinworth excelled at figure modelling, as this group proves. The pair of vases left and right are worth £3,000-4,000 ($5,500-9,000) and the clockcase, centre, £2,500-3,500 ($4,500-6,400). Interestingly, the penny farthing rider is a boy in this case and a milestone support at the rear reads “5 MILES TO LONDON”. It’s worth £1,200-1,500 ($2,000-2,700). The near identical figure but with a frog rider is named “Bicyclist”

The “GT” monogram used on much of Tinworth’s work

A remarkable and rare Tinworth figural group, circa 1880s, titled The Swimming Bath. Notice the use of the blue glaze to represent water and the brown stoneware-coloured bodies in it, modelled with such precision that they do indeed appear to be swimming. It’s worth £6,000-8,000 ($11,000-14,500)