Two new developments on the traditional ceramics front will be among the summer high season events in London.
The collaborative initiative formerly known as Eight Days in June, which has been staged by a group of specialist dealers in Kensington Church Street since 2001, has rebranded and changed its dates.
Instead of taking place in early to mid-June, the event has moved to late June/early July, coinciding with the general shift of summer events to what is fast becoming the high season in the London art calendar.
Accompanying the move is a name change: from Eight Days in June to Kensington – The Heart of Ceramics, in part because of the new July date and also because it now lasts for five days (from June 27-July 1).
Three of the four participants remain the same: Simon Spero, who has his own shop in Campden Street, London W8, and Garry Atkins and Roderick Jellicoe, who join forces with English pottery and porcelain respectively for an exhibition at Stockspring Antiques.
New to the quartet will be Juno Antiques, whose exhibition celebrating 10 years of trading is staged at E&H Manners’ Gallery.
The other new dealer project is born out of the closure of the Haughtons’ Art Antiques London fair, which has always featured a sizeable section of dealers in English and Continental ceramics.
With AAL off the schedule, three dealers – Christophe Perlés, Robyn Robb and Brian Haughton – will be holding a joint exhibition of English and Continental pieces under the title A Collector’s Paradise at Brian Haughton’s Gallery in Duke Street. This too runs in the busy late June/ early July slot from June 30-July 7.
And the Haughtons’ ceramics lecture programme which was such a popular feature, first of their International Ceramics Fair and Seminar and then of AAL, will also be preserved. It now takes the form of a two-day seminar titled The Splendour of the Dining Room to be staged at Christie’s from June 28-29, just before the exhibition.
A Collector’s Paradise
‘Grubbe type’ dessert plate of c.1765-70 decorated by James Giles, priced in the region of £14,000 at the ‘A Collector’s Paradise’ show.
A main plank of the Haughton element of the group show, A Collector’s Paradise, will be a selection of more than 40 pieces of first period Worcester that have come from the celebrated Tuke collection formed by father and son AW Tuke and Sir Anthony Tuke.
James Giles’ decorated pieces from desirable named and coloured ground services are among the Tuke highlights, which include this ‘Grubbe type’ dessert plate of c.1765-70.
It measures 9in (22.5cm) in diameter and is painted with a central scene in green camaieu of a traveller on horseback, leading another horse through an arcadian landscape set within a gilt lambrequin border.
The plate is comparable to a specimen in the Victoria and Albert Museum given by a descendant of Giles and is priced in the region of £14,000.
