Scraps Of Mind

Archive for the ‘Antiques & Collectables’ Category

Posted by Karen on

March 14, 2007

Ballarat Antiques Fair 2007

Labour Day weekend in Victoria heralds the Moomba Festival, the Ballarat Begonia Festival and the Annual Ballarat Antiques Fair. Those alert readers who have been following my Collectables series, browsing through my many and varied collections, will know that I’m a bit addicted to ‘old stuff’ (see Confessions of a Collectaholic). So an Antiques Fair makes me feel like a kid in a candy store.

Situated just over an hour’s drive out of Melbourne, the old gold mining town of Ballarat is now a lovely regional city just reeking with history (in Aussie speak that means anything between 200 and 50 years old). And the Ballarat Antiques Fair is one of my favourite fairs as it’s quite a large event and pulls dealers from all over the country. So you get to see a really good selection of stuff. And, of course, that means you can be pretty much guaranteed of finding something you want to buy. In my case there were many somethings. But since I’d just bought a new camera the day before I felt I should restrain myself from going completely wild with the credit card.

One of the things I love about these fairs is the interesting curiosities on display. The first thing to catch my eye when I walked in was a huge Teddy Bear sitting in an old pedal car. I’m a little bit partial to teddies (“what aren’t you partial to?” I can almost hear Seona sigh) And I was very drawn to him, but I resisted temptation and moved on. Then I came across this giant ceramic cockerel. He was just gorgeous (for looking at, not for buying) so I had to take a photo.

The basketball stadium where the event was held was packed with every imaginable vintage and antique collectable and knick-knack. As well as beautiful pieces of furniture, both Australian and European.

And it was a very successful shopping day for me. I picked up a couple of hatpins for my collection: one from the 1930s and one from the 1940s. I also netted a lovely green glass Victorian scent bottle with brass fittings. It hangs by a chain from a finger ring and was worn by ladies when they went to a dance to annoint themselves with perfume when things started to get a little warm. And my final purchase was a set of blue English wheel-cut port glasses from around 1910. I am testing them out as I write this post and I’m happy to tell you they work very well.

Toby Jugs – Will the real Toby Philpot please stand up?

Tope: To drink intoxicating liquor to excess esp. habitually hence, Toper (Toby) – Oxford Concise Dictionary

Although man has been fashioning vessels in his own image since he first discovered how to make waterproof containers out of clay, the Toby Jug is a particularly British phenomenon.

Many stories abound over who was the original ‘Toby’ on whom the jugs are based. And although a couple of heavy Stingo drinking Yorkshiremen are attributed with being the original Toby Philpot (fill pot), there’s no real proof that a single individual is the true inspiration. But, hey let’s not mess with legend!

Toby Jugs were originally large pitchers for serving ale in English hosteleries and inns during the 18th century. Over time their practical use diminished (they posed hygene issues with all the little nooks and crannies which were difficult to clean) and they were made for purely decorative purposes. The ‘original’ Toby design is of a portly gentleman sitting on a chair with a brimming mug of ale in one hand and a long stemed pipe in the other. Many variations of this design have been made by many different potters over the years but it remains the standard design and is known to collectors as the ‘Ordinary’.

Other styles of Tobies depict our portly gentleman seated on the ground with one knee drawn up or in a standing position, usually taking a pinch of snuff, playing the fiddle, and many other different poses.

My collecting interest lies with Toby Jugs of the 19th to mid 20th Century. I have about 25 so far but I do NOT collect character or face jugs such as the Doulton series ware which just model the head and shoulders of their subject. Don’t get me wrong I have nothing against these jugs, but I have kept my scope on Toby Jugs and am avoiding the ‘made for collectors’ items if possible.

The three Tobies I have selected from my collection for this photo are my three oldest ones. The Squatting Toby with the blue lustre coat on the left is from Allerton’s Pottery in Staffordshire and is probably from the first half of the 20th century. In the centre is a Snuff Taker made by Sampson Smith dating back to the late 19th C. and the red coated one on the right is my favourite: a double handled, double sided squat Toby from the 19th C.

As a sub-set of my Toby collection I have a collection of Toby Jugs made by Shorter & Son from the mid 20th Century. The style of these jugs is very different to that of other Tobies; kind of quirky. And that’s probably why they appeal to me. The hand painting is often naive but I prefer that to the airbrushed perfection of the Doulton, Artone and Kevin Francis type of models.

My one exception to my ‘no character/face jugs’ rule is a Shorter & Son King Neptune character jug which complements the King Neptune Toby (both 1950s-1970). King Neptune is a great model of a merman with a lobster across his front and a sea horse as the handle. The other example I have selected here is Covent Garden Bill (1940-1950), sitting on a fruit basket with another on his head and a banana for a handle. He is a reasonably uncommon model so I was particularly pleased when I managed to add him to my collection. He also has a character jug version which I will definitely make another exception for and add to my collection if I come across. And the last example I’ve chosen is the Chelsea Pensioner on the left (1930s-1964) which, at 4.5″ is the smallest of three sizes in which this model was made.

TG Green – Cornishware

In an earlier post I wrote about my TG Green Streamline collection. I thought it might be time to introduce my other TG Green collection: Cornish Kitchen Ware.

We covered a brief history of the TG Green Pottery in the previous post so I won’t go over that again. But the Cornishware story is interesting in its own right.

Supposedly named by a TG Green Regional Sales Representative who was inspired by ‘the blue of the Cornish skies and the white crests of the waves’, Cornishware is the most famous of all the TG Green lines. It is the definitive blue and white kitchen ware pottery of the 20th century (Willow pattern doesn’t really count as it is primarily used on dinner wares rather than than kitchen ware). When the popularity of Cornish Kitchen Wares took off it spawned dozens of ‘me too’ lines from competing manufacturers: Kleenware, Fowlerware, Stanley Ware, Bretby Ware, to name a few. But none of them really captured the market like Cornishware.

Blue banded white wares had been around since the mid-Victorian years and there’s no record of who at TG Green came up with the idea of turning this type of pottery into a modern range of kitchen wares. It is believed that the idea was driven by the need to give the TG Green lathe turners employment in the mid 1920s during the post WWI recession. A Pottery with a background of social conscience. Gotta love that!

The Cornishware pieces are fired, coated with slip which is allowed to dry and then coated with the blue slip. When this is dry the pieces are mounted on a lathe and bands of blue slip are turned off to reveal the white body beneath. Then of course they are fired again. This also gives the pieces their texture as they have a very definitive edge to them; not achievable by just painting the stripes onto the body. This hand lathe process is still carried out today in the modern Cornishware pieces.

Over the years Cornishware has been made in several colourways: yellow (Sunlit Yellow), buff (Cornish Gold), red, black, green and teal. My collection focuses on the original blue range with pieces mainly from the 1930s and 40s; although I have a teapot from the 1960s when the range was redesigned by Judith Onions in an effort to modernise it and revitalise its market appeal.

I’m especially fond of the flour and sugar shakers which still have their original rubber stoppers in the bottom. And the sauce boat (front left) which is hard to come by. I still buy the occasional piece of Cornish ware (the pepper and salt shakers were a fairly recent addition to the collection) but, to be honest, I’ve currently shifted my collecting focus more to the Streamline collection.