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The Roy Davids Collection
Roy Davids is a most unusual collector; a bibliophile who Roy’s tastes tended more towards the English tradition of
extended his scholarly training into a very different field. ‘country-house’ Kangxi. Hence his collection is strong in
He was driven to assemble a striking and representative richly-enamelled famille verte and striking blue and white. This
collection, over a relatively short period of time, by a newly- is in many ways the epitome of traditional English taste; the
discovered fascination with the colours, varieties and forms of jars, vases, dishes, pieces de forme assembled expensively
Ming and Qing ceramics, as Dominic Jellinek has explained. in the late 17th and early 18th century from the elegant
But Roy’s ‘passion for pots’ developed in a way unique in my Restoration-period boutiques run by ‘Chinamen’ in the City
experience among collectors. He began to take a greater and and also the West End’s newly-constructed luxury quarter,
greater interest, not merely in more unusual historical aspects Jermyn Street. Roy appreciated these handsome ceramics
of collecting Chinese ceramics, but above all in the historic not just for their visual quality, but as a student of taste and a
collectors themselves; those predecessors who had enjoyed lover of literature. He understood why James McNeil Whistler
Chinese pots, and as collectors had left a tiny footprint on the wanted to fill the shelves of his elegantly aesthetic studio
subject; a personal collection label, a loan to an exhibition, with old Chinese porcelain made 150 years earlier, while he
a ‘mention in dispatches’ in the Transactions of the Oriental painted from the riverside balcony his exuberant scenes of
Ceramic Society. Onto these mostly-forgotten pioneers Roy fireworks bursting over Battersea Bridge, and entrancing
latched with a bibliophile’s passion and professional skills. In images of ‘The Lady from the land of Porcelain’ surrounded
some ways his greatest contribution to the study of Chinese by Kangxi blue and white. A ‘sapphire-blue’ Kangxi bowl
ceramics is not his excellent and representative collection, but decorated with dragons was not just a fine piece, but recalled
the ‘magnum opus’ with which he and his co-author Dominic the shadowy late Victorian image of the imaginary Dorian
Jellinek will always be identified: the researching, collating Gray, entranced by such porcelain and filling it with brashly-
and publishing of over 1000 brief biographies of vanished and contrasting orange-gold chrysanthemum blooms.
more recent collectors of Chinese ceramics principally in the
UK. ‘Provenance’ is a book which will still be dipped into, for Roy is an immensely well-read collector, whose tastes
pleasure and edification, when most private collections will be have evolved over the years and touched on a number of
no more that a dusty auction catalogue. art and literary categories. The dispersal of his Chinese
porcelain collection at Bonhams marks the end of one
Roy’s collection clearly reflects his personal tastes, as well satisfying venture replete with making new friends among the
as his wish to assemble a wide-ranging representative group specialists, fiercely negotiating new acquisitions, and intensely
of ceramics essentially since the 16th century. Roy was very researching these earlier collectors and academics whose
attracted to the wares glazed in the unusual and very volatile names (and reputations) are still current. His own mark on
yellow flux. In this, the second Lord Cunliffe (1899 – 1963) was the subject is represented not just by this auction catalogue,
his great predecessor; the enthusiastic Lord had set out to a summation of his collecting, but by the publication of
create a dinner service of Ming Imperial yellow saucer dishes, ‘Provenance’, the closest that any contained within its 400
and reached some 17 before the price began to exceed £5 pages will ever come to achieving immortality!
each and the fun of the chase wore off. The last few remaining
from this initiative were included in The Cunliffe Collection sale Colin Sheaf
in our New Bond Street rooms on 11 November 2002. Chairman, United Kingdom and Asia
London, August 2014
