Page 28 - Bonhams Asian Art Sydney November 4, 2020

The Robert Stanley Hope Smith Collection

Lots 64 - 87

Robert S. H Smith and Joan Smith

Robert Stanley Hope Smith, known to friends and family as Stanley, Stanley and Joan lived an unassuming life, intellectually stimulated by
was born on 13th December 1910 in Horton, Bradford. During the 2nd eclectic subscriptions to periodicals. He played the organ at church
world war he served with his local Home Guard Regiment. He was a services in Baildon, watched his son play rugby for his school and
solicitor and partner at Browning Oliver and Smith in Bradford and was county, and on summer afternoons tended his allotment. They loved
known to have worked closely with the refugee polish community who the Yorkshire Dales, visiting country houses, occasionally staying
settled there in the late 1940s and early 50s, helping them establish a in hotels in the Lake District. On Sundays they drove a specially
future within the city that still prospered with a textile industry. adapted Jaguar across the Yorkshire moors.
He married Joan Shelton, a schoolteacher, on 4th September 1946, Members of their family were the few fortunate enough to see the
bought a small semi-detached house, Colwyn, Park Mount Avenue in porcelain collection displayed in the back room of Colwyn on a
Baildon and had one son, John. dresser alongside the piano and harpsichord. They assumed that
Stanley collected even broken pieces of Chinese pottery because
According to his diary he began collecting “Famille Rose” and they were all that he could afford, unaware that Kintsugi was key to
“Famille Verte” pieces in 1946 from local auction houses, shops and his passion, for he had suffered from polio as a child and walked with
privately in Harrogate, Leeds and Bradford. His wife Joan also shared a cane.
his passion and they made further purchases on weekend trips to
country houses and antique fairs. Stanley died in November 1979. Joan remained a member of the
Oriental Ceramic Society for the rest of her life. In later years her
He made his first Sotheby’s purchase via absentee bid on 2nd October grandchildren remember her reading to them in front of an open fire
1950 and on the 15th December the same year was elected a from auction catalogues, OCB periodicals and Oriental art study
member of the Oriental Ceramic Society. In 1959 Frank Davis, another books, teaching them about the Chinese dynasties and their dates
north of England OCS member, wrote to say that he would surely be while referring to the pieces still on display in the back room where
welcomed by the “learned lot” in London but it is unlikely Stanley ever they had remained undisturbed for the previous 45 years. She died
made it there because of the disability that made travel difficult. in 2000 and the collection was subsequently put into storage. The
family has decided that the time has come for others to enjoy and
Over the following decades he was delighted to acquire pieces admire the collection and hope that it will bring as much pleasure as
it did for Stanley and Joan.
from collections such as the Lord Cunliffe, the Montague Meyer, the
Leonard Gow along with OCS exhibition pieces. What may have not
been key pieces for them became the core of his collection.

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