Page 73 - Bonhams May 11th 2017 London Fine Chinese Art

The late owner of Lots 160-181 was part of this charmed
collecting period. Flitting from small salerooms dotted in
retirement towns along the English South coast, to unregarded
junk shops and house clearances in the north of England,
he saw much pass through his hands; oil paintings and
watercolours, stained glass, Asian art, furniture, silver, medieval
maps. His personal taste, the objects which did not get
passed on, was for the art of China, especially ceramics. He
was lucky to be advised on occasion by museum luminaries
like Soame Jenyns who were, he used to recall, always ready
to pass on nuggets of useful information; at a time when
specialist knowledge was less readily available to amateur
collectors faced with a plethora of ill-identified Asian material.
He had some lucky finds which he kept. Most of his personal
collection of pots has been dispersed by now; but a few
remained when he passed away recently, still happily telling
stories of Ming porcelain discoveries on wet afternoons in the
Lanes at Brighton, or of loading up his car with Chinese Export
bought from nondescript houses in the Cotswolds. His last
‘pots’ are finally coming back to auction today, fifty or sixty
years after he bought them in the highways and byways of the
somnolent English art trade during the Swinging 60s.