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Buying Briglin Pottery If you are new to buying ceramics and want to buy some items the articles below might be of use. I would always recommend buying small purchases first until you know what you are doing. Much of the fun of collecting comes from finding the items, if it was easy then everyone would be selling and buying Briglin. A woman in an C20th antiques shop recently said to me that she did not care much for Briglin and that she had sold the few items she had. I could not help thinking as I departed that I was in her shop, she had no Briglin to sell me and I was not interested in the other C20th ceramics items on sale. Does it matter if she liked Briglin or not? I think not.
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10.01.2010 - CAUTION! - Please be careful when buying from eBay. Many of the items for sale look suspicious IMHO There is a lot of 'junk' being sold at auction and buy-it-now. It makes me sad to see this happening and people should be ashamed of themselves. I have seen 'odd' items bought by respectable sellers who then unwittingly try to re-sell them. Please be careful, especially with the animals. |
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Is It Real?- Briglin &
Ebay Is it real? Well, err perhaps... some rubbish is being made and sold on ebay by idiots. So please be careful when you buy. Not everything that is sold is real and you should use your own judgment. If you are starting to collect then my general suggestion is don't buy lots from ebay before you know what you are doing, start with small inexpensive items, that is what I did. If you have any doubt about an item on ebay then 1) don't bid, and 2) ask for further information and photos. The best advice is to only buy pieces that you really like, not just because you think you can make a profit on them or because they are going cheap. Buy pieces that are good examples of their type. If it looks cheap then there may be a reason that no one else has bid on an item. Items that sit on ebay for long periods on 'buy it now' are probably overpriced or fake or both IMHO. When you have held many obviously real pieces you can tell quickly if you pick up a fake item made but some joker in his pottery class at school. Real items have a evenness and a symmetry - a fineness. They are obviously made with skill. Be wary of fuzzy pictures on ebay, they are often fuzzy for a reason. I have several good ways of telling the real stuff from the fake, they are very difficult to fake..... sorry but I can't post them here for obvious reasons. Please ask for a returns policy when you buy an item on the internet, for both ebay sellers and internet shops, then if you dislike it and / or think it is a fake when you receive it in the post you can return it by just paying the postage. This will not get you all your money back as you will have paid for x2 sets of postage buy it's better than keeping a fake (or suspected fake) item. I would also suggest that you are careful when buying Briglin animals off the internet. It's only my opinion but many of the animals I see on ebay may not be original. Perhaps they seem easier to make or they sell better than other objects. Remember the more fake items you buy the more they will make. On the whole ebay is Ok. The prices seem fair, and most of my transactions have gone without a problem. The one trick people do use is to sell damaged or incomplete items in the internet. This does happen. Read the description very carefully and do not rush bid at the last second without knowing about the item first. Items will be described as 'prefect' then arrive with an obvious hairline or a chip. A friend said to me that ebay are trying to get rid of the little seller. The little buyer is good for them, but the little seller with very few transactions causes ebay much consternation. IMHO ignore sellers transactions numbers. I have had dodgy items from sellers with 1000's of sales to their name and conversely I would not be too happy about paying a new seller with few sales to his name £100 for an item either. Always get insurance for items over what you are prepared to lose. For me this is about £25 - £30. The extra cost is worth it. Don't buy items for profit. Buy items that you like and that are reasonably priced. If you go down the route of only bidding on items you think are a bargain you will end up with a load of rubbish low priced items with some of them being not correct. In the long run you are better off with 3 top quality expensive and rare items rather than 30 small common items, but it is hard to know what to buy and if it's genuine without buying all the small items first. It's a REALLY BAD policy to bid on an item just because others are doing so and to just assume it is worth what you are bidding. This policy is an easy way to lose lots of money. Don't assume anything, READ THE DESCRIPTON, check the pictures, make sure. Beware of Shill bidding - 'Shill' bidding is where false bids are placed by the sellers friends "driving prices up with phony bids, they seek to provoke a bidding war among other participants. Often they are told by the seller precisely how high to bid, as the seller actually pays the price (to himself, of course) if the item does not sell, losing only the auction fees." Buy small and buy what you like and use you own judgment. Don't buy items from abroad, and pay by Pay Pal. Although Pay Pal may not protect you as much as you think. DO NOT USE CHEQUES! - Never send a cheque to anyone you don't personally know and trust. They give away all your banking details, sort code, full name, back account and yes.... even your signature. They are a thing of the past. They can be altered copied or the information used for fraud. DO NOT GET GREEDY - Remember if a deal looks too good to be true, then it probably is.
Links: (updated 26.04.2011) How to 'buy' positive feedback on ebay - It's cheap and very easy The Register (article on fraud on ebay. I don't want to scare anyone but please take care) Feedback Scams (how 100% feedback might not be what it seems) Top 10 Ebay scams (interesting) Ebay (ebay link to Briglin items currently for sale)
2008 Forger of Bernard Leach This is the links to the articles published in 2008 about the forger who made £20,000 from his home made Bernard Leach and Lucie Rie pieces. His name was Jeremy Broadway and he was a school teacher in Blandford, Dorset He used his skills as a potter to fake classic potters work and sell them for profit. It just goes to show that a reputable provenance is worth every penny. Strangly enough this page is still up about Jeremy. It points out that he 'works from home' |
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Forger Links |
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Where Can I Buy Briglin?
Well everywhere! You just have to look. Obviously it helps to live in or near to London, but it turns up in the strangest places. London is the best place to look since it was made there. Ebay has a steady flow of items. It is becoming harder to find though, and the bidding on nice pieces is sometimes competitive. It can still be found at car boots and because of it's 'brown' nature it does not normally catch the eye. I have been out looking for items and pieces have been on the shelf in front of me in a shop and I have looked at them and missed them. Sometimes I'm disappointed as I can't find anything then I realize that the vase right under my nose is Briglin. Search and you will find. There is a lot of it out there!
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Do You Have Any Items For Sale? Sorry, none of my items are for sale. I have always thought of collecting as hoarding, and nothing I have seen about human nature has changed my mind. So many people collect things for the sake of it. I started by buying small items of some of the studio potteries such as Carn, Poole, Honiton, Aldermaston, Tremar, etc. and I just liked Briglin. I still have many other items including some glass, it all interests me. The thing is...what do you do with it all. It fills the shelves and the table by the front door, the mantle piece, then you start keeping it in boxes under the table....
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