San Francisco Ceramic Circle
Monday,October 18th, 1999 Meeting
"Connoisseurship in Early English Porcelain -
the Bernard Watney Collection "
John Sandon
Author and Head of European Ceramics at
Phillips, London
The October meeting of the San Francisco Ceramic Circle will
be held on Monday, 18th October in the Florence Gould Theater
at the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park, San Francisco.
Entrance is from the West terrace from 7.30pm. The lecture will
start at 8.00pm.
Our speaker will be John Sandon, Author and head of the European
Ceramics department of Phillips, London. His lecture is entitled
"Connoisseurship in Early English Porcelain - the Bernard
Watney Collection".
The mini-exhibit will be of 18th century English porcelain.
Set up is at 7.30pm
About the lecture:
Dr. Bernard Watney was President of the English Ceramic Circle
and acknowledged as the World's leading authority on English blue
and white porcelain. With his death last year, collectors of English
porcelain lost an outstanding researcher, who had contributed
immeasurably to the understanding of the earliest English factories,
and the San Francisco Ceramic Circle lost a good friend who had
talked to us about the subject he loved. When Dr. Watney began
collecting, very little was known about the smaller London, Liverpool
and Staffordshire factories. Bernard took unidentified pieces
as a challenge and was determined to identify the sources of the
many groups of similar wares he was assembling. His painstaking
research, assisted by archeology, enabled many previously "lost"
factories to be identified. Among these was Limehouse, one of
the earliest European porcelain factories and a contemporary of
Chelsea and Vincennes. John Sandon's talk will review the connoisseurship
that enabled Dr. Watney to assemble his collection of over two
thousand pieces of the earliest English porcelains including so
many quite incredible rarities.
About the lecturer:
John Sandon is head of European Ceramics at Phillips Auctioneers
in London and is involved with all their major ceramics auctions
world wide. He was born into the world of antique ceramics. His
father, Henry Sandon (who has also spoken to the SFCC) was curator
of the Dyson Perrins Museum at Worcester for 17 years. John Sandon
has been involved in excavations at the Worcester factory site
and has authored or co-authored several books on his favorite
factory. Among these are "The Dictionary of Worcester
Porcelain - 2 Volumes" ; "The Phillips Guide
to English Porcelain of the 18th and 19th Centuries" ;
"Worcester Blue and White Porcelain" ; "Grainger's
Worcester Porcelain" (with Henry Sandon) and Worcester
Porcelain 1751 - 1790: The Zorensky Collection" (with Simon
Spero). John Sandon regularly contributes articles to many
magazines and is well known as a ceramics expert from his appearances
on the BBC "Antiques Roadshow". In 1998 he collaborated
with Bernard Watney on an exhibition of his Liverpool porcelain
and has most recently prepared the catalog of the Watney Collection
which will be dispersed over the course of three sales at Phillips.
Future S.F.C.C. programs:
11/19/99 ( Friday ) Dr. Alan Darr "Innovations during
the Twilight of Florence: Eighteenth-Century Sculpture in Doccia
Porcelain"