Large selection of ‘prime period’ Moorcroft comes to auction

02 September 2024 One of the best collections of Moorcroft pottery to come on the market in the last decade will be offered by Sworders next month.

Moorcroft Claremont pattern vase made for Liberty & Co., estimate £800-1200 at Sworders. View the full catalogue entry.

Collecting for almost 40 years from as far afield as Canada, Australia and South Africa, the north of England vendor has focused on the prime period signed wares from the early Macintyre era and the William Moorcroft years.

The collection, to be sold in over 250 lots on September 17, has a total estimated value of around £75,000.

It was as a 24-year-old in 1897 that the art school graduate William Moorcroft (1872-1945) first worked with the commercial pottery and porcelain firm of James Macintyre & Co.

William Moorcroft for James Macintyre Florian Ware miniature Alhambra pattern vase, estimate £200-300 at Sworders. View the full catalogue entry.

Within a year he was in charge of the company’s ornamental ware department and, by 1904, the Art Nouveau-influenced Florian Ware that perfected the technique of trailing slip known as tube-lining had won him a gold medal at the St Louis International Exhibition.

His early style, featuring a variety of blooms, including forget-me-nots, cornflowers, irises and tulips, is one of the most acclaimed Moorcroft ranges. The collection for sale at Sworders displays the vendor's particular passion for pieces in the Poppy design: from teawares to vases, there are some 66 pieces.

Moorcroft miniatures, produced in a bewildering range of forms and patterns from the early 1900s onwards, are a collecting field of their own. Some of these tiny rarities from the Macintyre era can command sums to rival those paid for full-sized versions. Miniatures were this collector’s first love and there are over 40 examples in different designs, each measuring no more than 3½in (8cm) high.

William Moorcroft for James Macintyre Florian Ware candlesticks in the Poppy pattern, estimate £300-500 at Sworders. View the full catalogue entry.

Backed by the famous London store of Liberty & Co., where many of his products were sold, Moorcroft was able to open an art pottery factory of his own in 1913, on Sandbach Road, Cobridge, Staffordshire.

Key amongst the artful patterns created there, specifically for distribution through Liberty, was Claremont, the popular toadstool pattern made in subtly different guises in the first three decades of the 20th century from c.1905.

A Claremont vase, printed with the mark 'Made for Liberty & Co.’ and the registration number 420081 for c.1910, is expected to bring £800-1200. It is one of 32 pieces in this pattern that together make a remarkable display.

Moorcroft miniature Claremont pattern vase, estimate £300-500 at Sworders. View the full catalogue entry.

Also popular sellers at Liberty were Eventide landscape designs with their autumnal balloon-shaped trees, and the similar Moonlit Blue pattern. There are a dozen pieces of each in the sale.

The series of relatively formal Art Deco wares made by Moorcroft in the 1920s and 30s assumed a more austere aesthetic. These pared-back tube-lined designs were well received in Paris at the time, however, and Moorcroft won an award at the famous 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes – the event that gave Art Deco its name – and again at the international expo in 1937.

Moorcroft Eventide pattern box and cover for Liberty & Co., with Tudric pewter cover, estimate £400-600 at Sworders. View the full catalogue entry.

The collection includes 26 pieces in the Fish design in a range of colours and glaze types. The most desirable are typically the high-temperature flambé glazes for which Moorcroft built a special kiln in 1921.

A vase with this lustrous effect, with the impressed Moorcroft signature and the mark Potter to HM The Queen (a reference to the royal warrant granted to the factory by Queen Mary in 1928), is expected to bring £2000-3000.