By Louise Irvine
A new exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London celebrates the “The Artistic Home” home of the late 1800s and the creativity and innovation of British art potteries. The artists, many of them young women, painted and decorated vases, chargers, and other ornamental wares by hand in the Aesthetic taste of the times. The beautiful examples on display were bequeathed by Ian and Rita Smythe, who became dealers in Victorian art pottery in the 1960s before it became fashionable.
I first met Ian and Rita in 1977 when I was researching The Doulton Story exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and they generously loaned treasures from their private collection. Their Britannia shop in Gray’s Antique Market in Mayfair was a mecca for collectors of Doulton wares and they also built a beautiful private collection. On visits to their home, which was decorated exquisitely with Arts & Crafts furnishings, I was introduced to many British art potteries including Burmantofts, Della Robbia, and William De Morgan. Little did I realize back then that I would have the opportunity to work with so many great examples by these artists at WMODA. We even have matching Burmantofts jardinières!
Ian and Rita particularly enjoyed Lambeth Faience ware and acquired their first piece in 1963. They knew nothing about it but admired its “sheer prettiness”. They learned to identify the work of the Doulton artists at the ground-breaking exhibitions presented by Richard Dennis in the early 1970s. By the 1980s, they had become very knowledgeable and wrote on the subject for the Doulton Collectors Club magazine. They shared their treasures again at the All a Blooming exhibition in the Royal Doulton Gallery in Piccadilly which encouraged many more collectors to appreciate the work of Victorian women artists, especially their favorites, Ada Dennis and Margaret Thompson. Arthur Wiener also enjoys Doulton’s Faience artists and has acquired an extensive collection which will be on display at our new Hollywood museum. I was delighted to discover that some of Arthur’s acquisitions were once in Ian and Rita’s private collection and it looks as if WMODA has the pair to Margaret Thompson’s Rose Fairy vase in the V & A exhibition.
Ian and Rita were also pioneers in the Majolica collecting market and founders of the Majolica Society International. In 2000, shortly before Ian died, they presented a spectacular display at the National Academy of Design in Manhattan. I imagine some of the fine pieces of Majolica ware in the WMODA collection passed through their hands at some point also. Highlights of Ian and Rita’s impressive art pottery collection were gifted to the V & A in 2018 and inspired The Artistic Home exhibition which runs until September 25. You can also see our WMODA vision of the “The Artistic Home” home in the Peacocks and Dragons themed rooms when the museum reopens.
Read more about Peacocks and Dragons in the Aesthetic era
Read more about Doulton Lambeth Faience wares at WMODA
Read more about William De Morgan at WMODA
As Good as Gold
All That Glistens
Read more about the Della Robbia Pottery at WMODA
Angels of Creation
