Masters of Contemporary Ceramics at Maak: In Private Hands | The Shipley Collection

Elizabeth Fritsch – The Shipley Collection

Masters of Contemporary Ceramics at Maak: In Private Hands | The Shipley Collection

Collectors of studio ceramics who are not yet familiar will be excited to learn of the curated auctions dedicated to contemporary ceramics presented by Maak every year in May and November.

This May Maak presents ‘In Private Hands | The Shipley Collection’, an important private collection featuring the masters of British Studio Ceramics, in parallel to their Contemporary Ceramics auction.

View the Auctions: https://maaklondon.irostrum.com/

Maak is the market leading auction house and art consultancy specialising in the very best Contemporary Ceramics and Craft. Since its foundation in 2009 by Marijke Varrall-Jones, Maak has been dedicated to presenting Contemporary Ceramics at the highest levels to international audiences. With a focus on nurturing the market through their carefully selected and curated regular schedule of auctions in London, they have maintained a specialist focus to ensure long term sustainable growth and raising the global interest in Contemporary Ceramics & Craft.

From the illustrious collection of the late John and Joan Shipley of Portland, Oregon, In Private Hands is a focused presentation of thirty eight pieces includes exceptional works by Hans Coper and Lucie Rie alongside Bernard Leach and important works by the leading ceramic artists to have graduated from the Royal College of Art in the 1970s, including Magdalene Odundo, Elizabeth Fritsch, Alison Britton, Jacqueline Poncelet and Martin Smith amongst others.
The Shipleys started collecting studio pottery in the late 1960s and over the next 50 or so years the couple regularly travelled to the UK and across the US, seeking out opportunities to acquire British studio ceramics. They shared a keen eye, selecting stand out works by the leading ceramic artists of the time.

The Shipleys acquired their first work by Hans Coper following their visit to the groundbreaking exhibition Peter Collingwood | Hans Coper at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London in 1969. Coper became the primary focus of their collection, as demonstrated in the eleven major works presented here. Coper’s contemporary and lifelong friend Lucie Rie was also a strong focus of the Shipley’s collection.

Dr Helen Walsh, Curator of Ceramics at the Centre of Ceramic Art (CoCA), York Art Gallery, recalls a story told by John Shipley when they met in 2019, “Imagine you have just fallen in love with and bought a huge Hans Coper vessel. You then remember you are due to attend the theatre in London that evening but realise there isn’t time to take your new prize back to your hotel for safekeeping- what do you do? This was the dilemma faced by John and Joan, in 1979 on the day they purchased his ‘Monumental Ovoid Pot’. In the end they checked their Coper pot into the theatre’s cloakroom and thankfully it remained safe and eventually travelled on the seat next to them on their flight home to Portland.”

The ‘Monumental Ovoid Pot’ was purchased by the Shipleys from Michael Sellers, Director of the Selwood Gallery in Frome, Somerset and Director of the British Craft Centre, in Earlham Street Covent Garden from 1974. Extensive correspondence between the Shipleys and Sellers reveals both their enthusiastic determination to selecting key works to add to their collection but also their emotional engagement with the artists themselves, with updates on their well being and references to visits a regular feature of the correspondence. Equally letters from Garth Clark in New York show a level of active engagement that spanned many years with the Shipleys often being the first collectors to be offered new works when they came available.

David Queensberry, who led the ceramics department at the Royal College of Art from 1959-1983 and established Queensbury Hunt Design, from where a number of important acquisitions came, was also an important connection for the Shipleys. Letters reveal their early interest in the work of Elizabeth Fritsch and light-hearted disappointment at not being able to acquire a work from the major exhibition of 52 works presented by Queensbury Hunt in 1984. Queesnberry described Coper and Elizabeth Fritsch as kindred spirits as both had an interest in music, geometry and philosophy.¹ The significant group of pots by Elizabeth Fritsch, known for her rhythmic forms and geometric surfaces, are an intriguing counterpoint to the modernist simplicity of Rie and Coper in the Shipley’s collection.

John and Joan’s lifelong interest in the arts went beyond just their own collection. Their support of the arts and culture was broad, progressive and inclusive and they were active members of the Portland community. This work was acknowledged when John and Joan received the State of Oregon’s Governor’s Arts Award in 2005.

Following Joan’s death in 2011, John continued to be actively involved in Portland’s cultural community. The Shipley’s collection of Coper and Rie formed a significant proportion of an important retrospective of Coper’s work Hans Coper | Less Means More at the Oregon Jewish Museum in 2019. The exhibition marked the first time Coper’s work has been shown in the United States since the 1994 Metropolitan Museum exhibition Lucie Rie/Hans Coper: Masterworks by Two British Potters. It is also the first time Coper’s work has been shown on the West Coast.

In an interview about the Less Means More exhibition, John is quoted as saying “It has been rewarding to share pieces from our collection and have them seen amidst other Coper works, especially those from England. The textures are most satisfying to the touch — sadly, the museum does not permit touching.”

“Whilst exhibitions such as these are important, it remains a rare experience to see museum grade ceramics like these in a home; a privileged chance to see how collectors like John and Joan and their family lived with their pots day to day. When these important works are held in private hands they are no less impactful, in fact they gain an intimacy and immediacy that is very moving and leaves a lasting impact.”
Marijke Varrall-Jones

With consignments to Maak’s May auction coming almost exclusively from private collections around the world, the London exhibition from 11 – 15 May is a rare opportunity for collectors and enthusiasts to see outstanding works by the leading names in studio ceramics. Carefully curated to offer a representative presentation of the full range of artistic development in British Studio ceramics as well as important names in International ceramics, it features important works by Bernard Leach and his followers of the Anglo Oriental style that dominated British studio pottery until the arrival of Lucie Rie and Hans Coper, both of whose work is also represented in the auction with important works that complement the Shipley collection. The strength of the Contemporary Ceramics market today lies in part due to the every expanding variety of creativity that sees the material possibilities of clay pushed to the extreme limits. From classic bowls by artists like Alev Ebuzziya Siesbye and John Ward to abstract vessels by Alison Britton, fantastical figurative sculptures by Christie Brown and Claire Curneen, to beautifully artistic functional wares by Walter Keeler, the Maak May auctions have something to spark the interest of any collector.