Merryn Schriever
Managing Director, Australia
Lot 47
A Martin Brothers stoneware Bird jar and coverby Robert Wallace Martin, dated 1890 height: 24.0cm (including base)
7 – 27 March 2025, 17:00 AEDT
SydneySold for AU$54,120 inc. premium
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A Martin Brothers stoneware Bird jar and cover
by Robert Wallace Martin, dated 1890
incised to foot and inside cover: RWMartin & Bros, London & Southall, 8.1890
on a circular foot, glazed in royal blue, brown and tan, on a buff ground, on an ebonised wooden base
height: 24.0cm (including base)
incised to foot and inside cover: RWMartin & Bros, London & Southall, 8.1890
on a circular foot, glazed in royal blue, brown and tan, on a buff ground, on an ebonised wooden base
height: 24.0cm (including base)
Footnotes
PROVENANCE
The Cheong Family Collection, Queensland
Of the roles played by the brothers in the production of the Bird jars, Malcolm Haslam has the following observations on p.91 of The Martin Brothers Potters, Richard Dennis, London, 1978,
'Charles gave advice and instructions about the birds, as he did about everything. It was he who had the lids modified so the heads could swivel rather than fitting in one position, a modification which added to the potential humour rather than the practicality of the pieces. Monkhouse remarked in his Magazine of Art article of 1882, how appropriate it was that a Martin bird, with a knowing look, was designed "to contain the weed of wisdom" and they have ever since been described as tobacco-jars, and yet they are hardly suitable for the purpose; they are not at all airtight and only the smallest hand could ever be inserted in them. From the start they must've been appreciated as humorous statuettes and it was their aesthetic qualities to which Charles attended, not their functional merits. As in the case of the grotesque monsters, he had to restrain the exuberance of Wallace's imagination, gradually persuading him to produce the more naturalistic birds in the 1890s'