Author: Nicholas

Jonathan Chiswell Jones at Horsham Museum & Art Gallery

'Fox and Hare' by Jonathan Chiswell Jones

In 1954, a young art teacher called Lewis Creed at Ashfold School, Handcross, wanted to introduce his pupils to the joys of making pottery. He had little equipment at the school, but obtained clay from Keymer tiles and was encouraged by the head of Horsham Art School to fire the children’s pots in the art school kiln. In due course, the school itself got hold of a wheel and a kiln, and was able to do everything on site. 60 years later, the fruit of that teaching can be seen in Horsham Museum and Art Gallery’s new exhibition ‘The Alchemy of Lustre’ – an exhibition of lustreware by ceramic artist Jonathan Chiswell Jones.

'Homage to Islam' by Jonathan Chiswell Jones

Born in Calcutta in 1944, Jonathan Chiswell Jones first saw pottery being made on the banks of the Hoogly river where potters were making disposable teacups from river clay. He was one of Lewis Creed’s pupils and, inspired by that early contact with clay, he has worked as a professional potter for the past 40 years. In 1998, Chiswell Jones was given an award by Arts Training South, which encouraged him to go on a course about ceramic lustre. He began to experiment with the thousand year old technique used by Middle Eastern potters to fuse a thin layer of silver or copper onto the surface of a glaze. This layer, protected by the glaze, then reflects light. Hence the term ‘lustre.’ The lustreware on show at Horsham Museum and Art Gallery demonstrates this almost magical transformation, whereby clay and glaze, metal and fire combine to produce pots which reflect light and colour, a process in which base metal seems to be turned to gold. Of this process Jonathan Chiswell Jones notes:

“I am proud to stand in this lustreware tradition, with its roots in the Islamic empire of the tenth century, its appearance in Spain and Italy in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, its revival in the nineteenth century by Theodore Dec in France and by Zolnay in Hungary, and in this country by William De Morgan, and more recently by Alan Caiger Smith.”

50 pieces of Jonathan Chiswell Jones’s creation will be on display in ‘The Alchemy of Lustre,’ which opens at Horsham District Council’s Horsham Museum & Art Gallery on 20 March and closes 30 April 2014. All of the artworks will be available for purchase, including the option to buy via Own Art.

Amber: Liquid Gold

0641 - Amber Beads at Auction
A single row necklace of amber beads. Sold for £7,000

As documented in our previous blog posts on amber, the market for amber is undeniably incredibly buoyant.

Among the offering of amber beads in Toovey’s February auction was a single row necklace of nineteen large and thirty small vari-coloured oval and spherical butterscotch coloured opaque amber beads (gross weight approx 175.5g, total length approx 88cm). This necklace (illustrated right) sold under the gavel for £7,000. The prices for this fossil tree resin which starts out in a liquid form are about twice the current price for gold per gram for the right example.

The February auction included a number of other examples, a selection of which can be seen below.

Toovey’s jewellery auction on the 26th March 2014 includes another good selection of amber.

Green Light for Amber Beads at Auction!

Detail of Amber Beads sold at Tooveys
Detail of Amber Beads sold at Toovey's in January

Further to our blog post ‘Amber Beads in Fashion at Toovey’s‘ and Rupert Toovey’s article in the West Sussex Gazette ‘Prehistoric Treasure in Demand Today‘. We wanted to share some of the prices achieved for amber beads in our January auction on the 29th January. Highest price was £10,000 for a single row necklace of thirty-eight slightly graduated oval vari-coloured opaque and semi-translucent butterscotch coloured amber beads, total weight approx 255g, total length approx 110cm, length of smallest bead approx 2cm, length of largest bead approx 2.7cm.

More amber beads are consigned in our Specialist Sale of Jewellery on 26th February 2014. See lot numbers 640-664. If you would like your amber beads valued for possible inclusion into a forthcoming auction please contact our offices, pre-sale valuations are free of charge at our Spring Gardens salerooms.

Amber Beads in Fashion at Toovey’s

Detail of Amber Beads Sold Recently at Toovey's Auctions
Detail of Amber Beads Sold Recently at Toovey's Auctions

Amber is a fossil tree resin. It originates as a soft and sticky substance and, as such, sometimes includes animal and plant material or insects. Many people will remember amber as being the source of ‘Jurassic Park’ in Michael Crichton’s fictitious novel, with dinosaur DNA being extracted from the blood of a mosquito trapped in amber.

Since the neolithic period amber has been appreciated for its colour, beauty and supposed healing properties. It has always been seen as a status symbol since these prehistoric times. The transparent amber seen in the movie adaptation of Crichton’s novel is the image most people conjure into their mind when thinking of amber. Pieces containing insect inclusions were particularly prized among aesthetic Victorians. Historically, and up until quite recently, this type of amber was the most desirable.

A recent fashion change has lead to another type of amber realising astonishing prices. This amber is less translucent and almost milky in appearance. The ‘butterscotch’ coloured amber and variants of it were popular in the 1920s and have dipped in and out of fashion ever since. Today, this specific type has captured the eye of the emerging economies of China, India and the Middle East. With Toovey’s global internet marketing, these buyers are only a mouse click away. Over the last few months Toovey’s have had a good number of amber necklaces consigned to auction, many from a single private collector – a small selection is shown below. The highest price achieved to date was in Toovey’s end of year auction on the 31st December 2013. A single row necklace of forty-nine mottled yellow butterscotch coloured graduated amber beads, gross weight 278g, total length 136cm, achieved £11,000. Other examples can be seen by searching for ‘amber necklace’ in the archive on Toovey’s website. The price variations are largely attributable to the colour, number and size of the beads, as fashion reverts back to prehistoric times using amber as a symbol of status. Another group of amber bead necklaces will be offered in our specialist jewellery auction on the 29th January 2014.

Click on an image to enlarge.

Toovey’s December 2013/January 2014 Opening Times

We close for Christmas at 11.30am on Friday 20th December.

We reopen for pre-sale viewing of our End of Year Sale on: Monday 30th December from 10am to 4pm and the sale day: New Year’s Eve, Tuesday 31st December, from 9am to the start of each session. All enquiries regarding this sale will be answered on our return.

After the sale, we are then closed on Wednesday 1st January. We return to our normal opening hours on Thursday 2nd January.

We would like to take this opportunity to wish all our clients and friends a very happy Christmas and a peaceful and prosperous New Year from all of us at Toovey’s.