Continental ceramics: ranging from Italian maiolica to German and French porcelain, this traditional area of collecting has been revitalised over the past five years by discriminating new collectors, as Angela von Wallwitz describes

Apollo, March, 2005 by Angela von Wallwitz

The 1990s were uneventful for the continental ceramics market. During the past five years, however, a considerable number of highly motivated collectors have emerged in America and central Europe. Perhaps in reaction to the vogue for minimalist white interiors, many successful entrepreneurs seem to have discovered that it is more fun to decorate with objects that lead to discoveries and lively conversations with friends.

This market changes constantly as a result of art-historical research. Value depends not just on a piece's rarity and artistic influence but also on the identity of its original patron and the collections it has passed through, since collectors with an 'eye', and a taste for the unusual and innovative, define different aspects of the pieces they acquire. Mass-produced figures and wares from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries without any historical connotation or provenance have fallen in value during the past decade; discerning members of the art world have long realised that a very old teapot is not necessarily a work of art. Today's buyers are almost all male entrepreneurs from central Europe and America; female collectors are fewer, but all the more powerful for it. American curators try to involve these highly motivated art lovers in their acquisition committees with the result that their purchases often reflect very high levels of connoisseurship. This combination of curatorial knowledge and the well-trained eyes of collectors means that American museums are now collecting far more actively than those in Europe. Lack of funds cannot be the only explanation, as the market for European porcelain has not been subject to irresponsible trade wars since the early 1980s. On the contrary, easier access to archives in eastern Europe has led to new research by both private scholars and public curators ready to share their fresh insights with dealers and collectors, thus contributing to a transparent, non-speculative market with some spectacular results.

During the late 1880s a Piero della Francesca cost only half as much as renaissance majolica or Palissy ware. This only shows how much we are all tied to the taste of our times. During the 1980s, the market for Italian maiolica of the haute epoque, 1490-1550, increased unusually fast--'fired', it might be said, by the Italians' love for their own history and art. The mane pulite anticorruption campaign in Italy in the early 1990s led to an immediate collapse of that market, which has recovered only slowly in the recent years. Good quality 'Istoriato' plates from the 1530s and 40s have regained a market value of about 30,000 [pounds sterling] and a piece of a rare form will fetch more: an Urbino pilgrim flask of 1550 (Fig. 1) achieved nearly 54,000 [pounds sterling] at Christie's in London in July 2002. Later copies are the worrying issue in this field. A very finely painted nineteenth-century pilgrim flask (Fig. 2) fetched 2,000 [pounds sterling] at the same sale; in a less scholarly catalogue, it could well have been dated to the sixteenth century--to the buyer's painful disadvantage.

Amongst the small number of highly important pieces in this field that have come to the market recently was an extraordinary Faenza charger painted by Francesco 'Urbini' in 1536 with an intricate pattern of penises. Its acquisition by the Ashmolean Museum for 240,000 [pounds sterling] was only possible because of the modest mark-up of the dealers R. Zietz and A. Moatti, who also held it back for almost two years to allow the museum to raise funds from private donors.

Finding fine and early ceramics is still a major problem. However, the restitution to their original owners of ceramics in public collections that had been expropriated at the time of World War II has brought a welcome number of highly important pieces to the market. Interest in the baroque porcelain from Europe's second oldest porcelain factory, Du Paquier in Vienna, had been dormant for years. The only book on the subject dates back to 1952 and even Austrians showed no particular interest in the factory. The restitution of the famous Bloch-Baur collection changed all that. The family entrusted Galerie Bednarczyk in Vienna with the sale, a substantial scholarly catalogue was produced and the pieces sold to the leading private and public collections in the west. One female collector who is in the process of creating a new museum in America has engaged a team of well-known art historians to write a book on the subject. Naturally prices have been rising, and have now reached the levels of the best Meissen and Sevres porcelain. A white Du Paquier elephant recently fetched (140,000 [euro] (Dorotheum, Vienna, 9 July 2004) and a Du Paquier barrel-shaped mug rose to an extraordinary 240,450 [pounds sterling] at Christie's in London (7 July 2003).

Christie's in London also handled the sale of the Kaumheimer collection of Nymphenburg porcelain in London (8 December 2003). Kaumheimer had collected in Frankfurt during the early twentieth century. He smuggled the collection out of Nazi Germany by sewing it into an old mattress and left the porcelain in the museum in Trient, Italy, before emigrating to America. There it stayed, almost forgotten, until the new director realised that it had never been formally donated and contacted the heirs. The market had not seen such a quantity of Nymphenburg porcelain in years. Recent research has discovered a method of dating figures precisely and the results of this were included in the catalogue. The market reacted to this more detailed knowledge accordingly: Bustelli figures in white dating from 1765-75 ranged from 5,000 [pounds sterling] to 8,000 [pounds sterling]; finely decorated sculptures by the same master dating from 1760-65 in good condition are now reaching between 40,000 [pounds sterling] and 80,000 [pounds sterling]; Bustelli figures from the Commedia del Arte series realise 100,000 [pounds sterling]-200,000 [pounds sterling] depending on the quality of the cast, decoration and condition. Recent exhibitions on Commedia dell arte in porcelain at Schloss Charlottenburg in Berlin and at the Gardiner Museum of Ceramic Art, Toronto, the latter accompanied by Meredith Chilton's book on the subject, have created a prominent trend in the world of ceramics. As almost all ceramic factories in Europe created a series of these theatrical figures, interest is widespread.