Collections and Collectors

I came across a lovely little photo essay in the NY Times Magazine about some long time antique collectors in NYC. The couple collects a wide variety of things including majolica.

There are some very nice pictures of their collections and reminiscences about collecting in the post war US.

If you get a chance, you should stop by the Times Magazine Web site and take a look.
You can find the article here.

Majolica Classics: Minton Majolica Oyster Plates

Imitated by many yet matched by none, the Minton six well oyster plate is the standard against which all others are compared.

Made in a variety of different colors, the turquoise plate is the most commonly found of the colors and usually the least expensive for the collector.

The most sought after plates in the series, however, are in other colors. The most expensive color is also the rarest, yellow.

Other colors in great demand are the cobalt, pink, lavender and malachite.

The malachite plates are made from two colors of slip covered with a tranparent green glaze. This gives the plates the appearance of being made of carved malachite. 

Beginners sometimes confuse the malachite plates with the mottled plates. The latter are not made from different colors of slip but instead two different colors of glaze applied to a regular earthenware base.

On very rare occasions Minton added hand painting, monograms or other custom adornments to their plates. These are quite beautiful and extremely difficult to find. These often have center wells glazed in the same color as the other wells.

The reverse of all the Minton plates is usually turquoise or green and all are marked on the reverse with the usual Minton marks. With a variety of copies made by smaller potteries around the same time, these marks are a guaranteed way of identifying the Minton examples.The plate below bears the cypher for 1873.

Minton made other oyster servers as well.
The rarest is certainly their Pallisy style oyster plate which is almost never seen.

Other oyster plates had fish shaped wells, wicker grounds and wells in a variety of different shapes, colors and combinations. 

Minton nine well oyster plate design from the English Registration books

The company also made revolving multiple tiered oyster servers in two sizes.

Minton majolica 4-tier revolving oyster server

Minton also made a revolving single tier oyster server and one that doubled as a seafood server.

With the prices of most majolica having dipped significantly in the past few years, Minton's oyster plates have remained in demand among collectors. They remain a good value for the investor and a beautiful addition to any collection.

Showbiz and the Antiques Roadshow

I have to admit that I love watching the Antiques Roadshow on PBS.

The American version on PBS is not quite as much fun as the British version shown on BBC America but it's an interesting way to pass an hour. For those of us who keep up with the antiques market it's always a laugh to see the prices placed on the items at the end of each evaluation. It's not that the prices are necessarily incorrect in the general sense, but the values are always couched in such ridiculous ways to inflate them far beyond what one may realistically expect in the antiques world. Such phrases as "well advertised auction," "retail shop," and "insurance value" are intentionally downplayed on screen to give the illusion that a piece has greater value than it really does.

For one thing I doubt if many people outside of the antiques business know that "insurance value" is generally double, or more, the real value of an object. The reasoning behind this is that many pieces are unique or practically unique so that replacement is practically impossible.
Here is the definition of "insurance value" from the Antiques Roadshow Web site, even though, even this is rather deceptive:

"Insurance values tend to be set at the top end of retail value. That is done ... so that those who need to replace goods lost to theft or to accident will have enough insurance money to buy an equivalent item from a dealer at current prices.

Thus, an insurance value is based on the price you might find for an object in what the IRS defines as a "reasonable time" — usually not the price you might get after bargain hunting for months. Unlike retail and auction values, which are often verbal, appraisers issue insurance values as formal written appraisals. People pay for these appraisals, because they must be carefully researched and hold up to legal challenges."

To someone casually watching the Roadshow this nuance of appraisal will just slip by unnoticed, obliterated by the excitement of the high value quoted.

The same happens when they use the phrase "well advertised auction." In that case they are factoring in a competitive market at a specialty auction that has two or more insatiable bidders competing against each other to inflate the price of an object. How many times have you been to an auction where a common piece sells for three times its retail value to the horror of the audience? It happens certainly but it has nothing to do with the real world value of the object. You are dealing with a rare situation where a piece's value is inflated far beyond its value to achieve the desired reaction from the TV audience.

The term "retail shop" is somewhat more understandable to those not in the trade, but is still deceptive by inflating the value. Retail value can be anything from 10% above the wholesale price to 200% or more above the wholesale price. One piece I saw sell at auction recently for $500 ended up on eBay with a $3500 price tag. Giving someone a retail value tells them absolutely nothing about what an owner can expect to receive for such an item.

In the end it's more about achieving the desired response of awe in the greedy eyes of the owner of the object on screen than informing the viewer about the real value objects. If you want to know the genuine value of an object shown on Roadshow a good guide is to cut the "appraised" value given at the conclusion of the appraisal by 33%-50%. That's usually the real world value of a piece.

Antiques Roadshow is a lot of fun but it's hardly an informational reality show. It's just entertainment—anll about showbiz.