OXFORD auctioneer Mallams is to sell studio pottery and artwork from the estate of Peter Dingley.

The 55 lots on Thursday, December 5 are expected to bring in excess of £100,000.

Mr Dingley MBE, who died last year aged 95, is a name synonymous with the best of modern British craft.

His gallery in Stratford-upon-Avon, which ran from 1966 to 1991, showed a wide range of applied arts, but concentrated particularly on studio ceramics, showcasing potters such as Bernard Leach, Lucie Rie, Hans Coper and John Ward.

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A series of exhibitions - the displays often put together by Peter’s partner, the textile designer Guido Marchini, proved influential. Lucie Rie, already trained at the potter’s wheel when she fled Vienna in 1938 and a life-long experimenter with glazes and shapes, said she had never seen her work look as good as it did in her exhibition at the gallery in 1983.

Oxford Mail:

David Whiting, author of Modern British Potters & Their Studios (2009), describes Peter Dingley as “a remarkable member of the small band of post-war pioneering gallerists who supported British ceramics”.

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He added: “Although he never thought of himself as a ‘collector’ as such, he acquired many fine pieces over the years. "These included important pots by Lucie Rie, Hans Coper, Joanna Constantinidis, Geoffrey Whiting and John Ward, as well as a good collection of 19th and 20th century pictures. Artists on his walls included Frances Hodgkins, Edward Ardizzone, and John Varley.”

Oxford Mail:

Highlights of the sale include a stoneware ’sack’ form vase by Hans Coper (estimate £20,000-30,000), a Lucie Rie bottle vase with pitted white glaze (estimate £6,000-10,000) and a Hans Coper ‘cycladic’ pot (estimate £10,000-15,000).

In accordance with Peter Dingley’s wishes, the pieces will be sold to benefit two charities that would benefit living potters and artists.

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The sale comes at a time when British studio pottery, once the preserve of a small number of devotees, is much in vogue. The demand for pieces by big names from the first, second and third generation of British post-war ceramicists, now runs parallel to that of Modern British painting.

Oxford Mail:

Mallams has a particularly strong track record in the genre with recent Oxford sales doing much to put potters such as John Ward, Edmund De Waal, Jennifer Lee and John Maltby firmly on the commercial map.

Half the proceeds of the auction will go to the Craft Potters Association, specifically to the Craft Pottery Charitable Trust, and the remainder to the Artists’ General Benevolent Institution.