Page 42 - Bonhams Asian Art London November 5, 2020

The Robert Stanley Hope Smith Collection

Lots 33 - 39

Robert S. H. Smith and Joan Smith

Robert Stanley Hope Smith, known to friends and family as Stanley, was Stanley and Joan lived an unassuming life, intellectually stimulated by
born on 13th December 1910 in Horton, Bradford. During the 2nd world eclectic subscriptions to periodicals. He played the organ at church
war he served with his local Home Guard Regiment. He was a solicitor services in Baildon, watched his son play rugby for his school and
and partner at Browning Oliver and Smith in Bradford and was known county, and on summer afternoons tended his allotment. They loved
to have worked closely with the refugee Polish community which settled the Yorkshire Dales, visiting country houses, occasionally staying in
there in the late 1940s and early 50s, helping them establish a future hotels in the Lake District. On Sundays they drove a specially adapted
within the city that still prospered with a textile industry. 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 dresser
Baildon and had one son, John. alongside the piano and harpsichord. They assumed that Stanley
collected even broken pieces of Chinese pottery because they were all
According to his diary he began collecting “Famille Rose” and “Famille that he could afford, unaware that Kintsugi was key to his passion, for
Verte” pieces in 1946 from local auction houses, shops and privately in he had suffered from polio as a child and walked with a cane.
Harrogate, Leeds and Bradford. His wife Joan also shared his passion
and they made further purchases on weekend trips to country houses Stanley died in November 1979. Joan remained a member of the
and antique fairs. Oriental Ceramic Society for the rest of her life. In later years her
grandchildren remember her reading to them in front of an open fire
He made his first Sotheby’s purchase via absentee bid on 2nd October from auction catalogues, OCB periodicals and Oriental art study
1950 and on the 15th December the same year was elected a books, teaching them about the Chinese dynasties and their dates
member of the Oriental Ceramic Society. In 1959 Frank Davis, another while referring to the pieces still on display in the back room where
north of England OCS member, wrote to say that he would surely be they had remained undisturbed for the previous 45 years. She died in
welcomed by the “learned lot” in London but it is unlikely Stanley ever 2000 and the collection was subsequently put into storage. The family
made it there because of the disability that made travel difficult. has decided that the time has come for others to enjoy and admire
the collection and hope that it will bring as much pleasure as it did for
Over the following decades he was delighted to acquire pieces from Stanley and Joan.
well-known collections formed by Lord Cunliffe, Montague Meyer and
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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