Who among readers of this weekly missive collects
Staffordshire pot
lids? Clearly no one who was at a sale I watched the other day because
not one of 16 lots of the things, mostly with two lids in each lot,
found a buyer prepared to pay the – generally – £80-120 per lot that the
auctioneer was expecting.
Let’s assume the reserves were on the low estimate. Is £40 too much
to pay for a colourful, ready-made (and often ready-framed) little work
of art that once had collectors falling over themselves to own? Answer: a
resounding yes. Fashions change and just like the
Clarice Cliff vase
that I know cost its owner £450 and she let go in the same sale for
£260, it’s very easy to get caught out and left to count the cost.
Which I suppose means that now is the time to buy Staffordshire pot
lids. They will probably never be cheaper. Read on and perhaps by the
end, you’ll know what you’re looking for.
Like so many antiques that have fascinated us, we were introduced to
pot lids by
Arthur Negus. In 1981, he interviewed actor Leslie Crowther,
arguably the best known collector of them, and “The Price is Right”
star explained how Victorian manufacturers of fish and meat pastes were
quick to realise that the attractively decorated lids enhanced the sales
of their products.
