Royal Worcester Ceramics: Stunning Antiques Worth Up To £20,000 | BBC Antiques Roadshow UK

It's quite early of course, it's Worcester porcelain. Oh right. It is actually amongst the most important pieces of early English porcelain we've ever had on a road show. Oh my goodness. I suppose it's going to be £5,000. Pardon? Well basically, they're my mother-in-law's, which I think she got hold of about 35 years ago. She actually paid £160 for them. Right. The work of Charlie Baldwin, the Royal Worcester Factory. Yes. Charlie Baldwin specialised in swans. During his career he painted many, many hundreds of vases, but usually with swans flying around the vases. What makes these so unusual is the swans are swimming, and that really does make them different. And it'll be interesting to see just what date they were painted. They'll have a mark on the bottom for the factory year code. The year mark, little dots around the Worcester factory mark, and here this one's got eight dots. That makes it 1899. 1899. And that makes sense, because that's quite early for this decoration. Most of Charlie Baldwin's swan vases are painted between 1900 and 1904. I see. And they're a very formal pattern, but they're not very detailed. These are really much, much more real swans, but they look more fluffy. And that's, I think, very typical of the early work of Charlie Baldwin. He did the whole lot, all the decoration. He will have signed them. His signature is just there, neatly painted, C. Baldwin. And let's not ignore the vases themselves. These modelling of the handles by James Hadley. The whole concept just works together so well. And it was a new, light, airy style of decoration, which Worcester was just working out. And they were to become enormously popular. Right. Both at the time, and indeed now. So we're going to look at, say, £15,000, perhaps even £20,000. Really? Gosh, you'll be happy with that. That's great. Really good. I mean, we've got a range of pieces here, but this is the most unusual clock. Where did this one come from? Well, that was given to my grandparents on the occasion of their marriage in January 1907. Oh, right. Well, we can probably sort of get quite close to it by looking at the year code. Worcester put a code on all their pieces. We've got the mark underneath, which is somewhat smudged there, counting the dots. We've got 1905 it was made. So in stock a year or two, then given in that occasion. Most unusual to get porcelain clocks. And a little painted scene there. Not signed by the artist, but I think that's probably the work of William Hawkins. Oh. A great flower painter. I say one feels with the porcelain painters and the artists at Worcester that you also know them because living in Worcester myself, as I did, their families are all around. And that introduced me to so many of the painters and people who's artists and signed on your pieces of porcelain. Are some of these by your family members? Yes. My grandmother was a Fylde. Her maiden name was Fylde. And Madge Fylde, who worked at the Porcelain Works for a short while, was her niece. And I feel very privileged to have two pieces that were actually painted by her. Probably not of great value, but they are to the members of my family. They become special pieces, aren't they? Yes. A great painter of roses, particularly, and flowers. And that's an atmospheric shaded background, which Worcester is so specialised in. Yes. But that's the nice thing. And then your family have been collecting and buying pieces after that. My father, particularly, had a great love of Worcester, China. And this is part of what he has left to me. Did he know the painters himself? I'm not sure whether my father actually knew, but certainly my grandfather, who was a well-known character in Worcester, he certainly knew Harry Davis and the Stimtons. Right. And we can see their work here. Really, of course, Harry Davis means a lot to my family, because dad knew him very well. I was just a very young boy. I was eight years, nine years old when I met Harry Davis and would spend hours as a boy watching him paint. And I can see the magic name Harry Davis on this one. We've got some very unusual pieces to get this subject. He's famous, really, for his French-style landscapes and sheep. Here you've got a little cottage scene. Yes. And that's very unusual to find gorgeous flowers growing up there. You can imagine yourself sitting by the cottage, as, of course, Harry would have done. He did little sketches and watercolours of local scenes. Is that a local building, do you know? I would think it's somewhere around Worcester, but I just feel that the flowers look as if they're almost growing. They come out as if they're alive. Absolutely amazing. That's the magic of porcelain. Somehow the colours are sealed there. They never change. We're looking at them now as they were painted. And a great big vase there by another marvellous artist. There's the work of Charlie Baldwin. Bird lover through and through, and sweeping swans growing around there. Nowadays, collectors are, of course, keen on wares. The value goes very much by who painted them. A little vase by Madge Files will be £250. A cup and saucer, about £100. So not little bad. But moving up in the scale of the artist's work, your clock, which was their wedding present clock family piece, is going to be, for its rarity alone, probably £800, £1,000. Then moving up to the top artists, and Harry Davis there on a vase and cover of an unusual scene. I suppose it's going to be £5,000. Pardon? £5,000 now for a Harry Davis vase. The painters themselves would have been shocked at these values. He'd never earned that in his life, poor old Harry. But here, a vase that size, in that quality, you're probably £8,000. Pardon? And a vase by Charlie Baldwin is going to be £7,000. Goodness me. Now, it makes you think, really. When these were made, as leavers of love by the artists, as just great bits of porcelain. But now they're expensive treasures too. First sight, we've got a little Chinese saucepot dating from the middle of the 18th century, an export ware piece, decorated in family rose enamels. The inside is particularly closely based on a Kinlong export piece. And these little precious objects around here, again, suggest China. But of course, this is not China. This is English. You knew that, did you? No. You didn't? It is. And it's actually a very rare little piece. It's been moulded with these petal forms, and then also with a sort of chinoiserie landscape. It's not really true Chinese. It's in the style of these Rococo scrolls. It's a very early piece of Worcester porcelain. Made just at that changeover period, when Lund's Bristol came to Worcester about 1751, 52. Very early. It's what we call Wigornia type, because there is a class of sauceboat with the word Wigornia, which is the Latin for Worcester, on it. And it's given its name to this class of porcelain. I see. So where, I mean, did you buy it as what? It was purchased into the family about 30 years ago now. Oh, really? Do you know what as? Well, actually, it wasn't noticed at the time. Wasn't it? We had a tray of different odds and ends, little things, glassware and sort of things, and this was amongst them. Was it? And just purchased for a couple of pounds. Well, it is actually amongst the most important pieces of early English porcelain we've ever had on a roadshow. I mean, it really is. It's a very rare little object. Like it is? Now, its tragedy, if it has one, is we've got a crack here. Now, this is actually a firing crack. This has been in the manufacture, and it's opened up a bit and split a bit further. We've also got a chip under the spout. But it's not, for a piece of this age and importance, it's not that bad. It's slightly speculative when you've got damage like this coming up with an estimate. I would give a wide estimate on this, somewhere between five and ten thousand pounds. No. Good, learn life. Not bad for a couple of quid's worth of junk on a tray, is it? I can't believe it. It's a great thing. Thank you very much. Thank you. The dog's dinner, carved in a very unusual technique. This is all scratched in with a sharp tool when the clay was wet. And it's actually a most unusual piece of Royal Worcester porcelain, because it's the work of a young artist called Albert Binns. The little AB, 1881, tells a very tragic tale, because he was 16 when he decorated your dish, and the following year he died. He was the son of the owner of the Worcester factory. He had enormous talent, and was going to be, I think, a great career as an artist at the potteries. But he swallowed a cherry stone when he was eating some fruit, caught a disease from it, and died. And the owner of the factory, Robert William Binns, was devastated by that. And we see very, very rarely the work of young Albert Binns, because in just two years... He's 16. That's right, he's a teenager. And in two years of potting, he produced a number of dishes like these. So, where did you get that from? I got that from my mother. She got it from her mother. And my mother, she was... My mother died in 1882. 1882. Her mother, I don't know when... Goes right back right, doesn't it? They don't often come on the market, but when they do, they're quite expensive. A dish like this is worth about a thousand pounds. Oh my goodness! Well, that's great. Thanks very much. Yes, obviously. I like the shape and, I say, the decoration. Do you know where it was made? I don't know. It just appealed to me when I actually saw it, and obviously... It's quite early, of course. It's Worcester, Porcelain. Oh, right. Worcester factory started in 1751, and this is within two or three years of the factory starting, shall we say, so it's 52, 53. That's 240-odd years ago. And the decoration inside is recorded as a standard book on Worcester blue and white, but the decoration here on this side, I think, is completely unrecorded. There would have been a pair of them originally, and they would have been about one and sixpence a pair, something like that. Would £500 surprise you? Good gracious, it certainly would, yes. Well, you can multiply it by three, really, sort of £1,500, so you want car boot sale... That was well worth bringing in. Yes. Good gracious.