Pottery & Porcelain

Spode "Shooting a Leopard" Platter, ca. 1815

Appraisal: Spode Transferware Platter, ca. 1815

Transcript

GUEST: So, back in 1998, I was working with an international organization and I was stationed in Baghdad, Iraq. Every Friday, I would go to the, uh, Baghdadi auction hall. One Friday, I found this thing. I acquired it for under $20. I had rented a home, and it had an empty buffet, and the home was kind of echoey. So I bought this platter to put in the buffet so that it would look homey. (chuckles)

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

GUEST: And so then when I finished my assignment there and I was coming back, I didn't know whether I could bring it, whether it fit into the boxes, but it did and it spent years away until one Thanksgiving, I went to my cousin, and she said, "Oh, did you see my new Spode platter?" And it was brown and white.

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm.

GUEST: It's a new collection. And I'm, like, "I think I have one, but mine is blue and white." She said, "Well, you may want to look into it. This is a pretty rare platter."

APPRAISER: Mm-hmm. Well, it is marked on the back, it says "Spode"...

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ...which is the manufacturer in England.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: And then it also has the title of this piece, which is "Shooting a Leopard."

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: And if we look at the scene there in the center, we have both Englishmen and Indians in India...

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ...on elephants, and they're on a hunt and they're hunting a leopard. And there are dogs, which have cornered the leopard in a tree. Spode and all other manufacturers in the Staffordshire region of England, there were many, many who made transfer ware, which is what this is. It was inexpensive everyday pottery.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: And it had all kinds of different scenes and patterns on it. And Spode made some of the very best. So this sort of platter was made for more of a middle class. This was mass-produced in huge quantities. I mean, no one knows for sure, but probably hundreds of thousands of pieces of this pattern were made...

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ...and then sometimes exported all over the world. This scene was inspired by a set of aquatints, which were issued monthly for subscribers, they were large prints...

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ...in 1805, and it was called "Oriental Field Sports." And then Spode introduced this pattern in 1809. And within a very short time, the prints were published as a book, and it was a book all about hunting exotic animals in India. So here we are, hunting a leopard, and to a modern world, that sounds kind of gruesome, to, they hunt and kill these wild animals. We have to look at it in historical context.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: Back then, yes, they were hunting for sport...

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ...but they were hunting for the hides, which they used.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: But they were also, uh... Leopards were considered a menace.

GUEST: Oh.

APPRAISER: They killed livestock.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: They killed humans. They, they were considered something that needed to be eliminated for safety. We see now that that is not the best thing for our planet and for the animals.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: But back then, they thought about it in a different way.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: And there's another interesting issue here. This is during the period of British colonialism.

GUEST: Yes.

APPRAISER: And wealthy Indians had always hunted for centuries.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: And so when the British were in India, they went hunting, as well. And here, we have British citizens who are living in India hunting...

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: ...and have Indian guides.

GUEST: Mm-hmm.

APPRAISER: These are people, this is, their living at that time...

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: ...is taking people out hunting. This is probably around 1810, 1820. So they made this pattern for a very long time, because it was very popular.

GUEST: I see.

APPRAISER: Queen Elizabeth is said to have one of the largest collections of this particular pattern.

GUEST: Oh, wow.

APPRAISER: Most transfer ware platters these days, it, it has fallen in popularity, fallen in value, and most transfer ware platters would only sell maybe in $100 to $500 range.

GUEST: Oh.

APPRAISER: But this, this pattern is worth much more money, perhaps less than it was 20 years ago, but it's worth a lot more money. Unfortunately, this particular platter has a little bit of damage.

GUEST: Yup.

APPRAISER: There's a crack here on the edge, and then if we turn it over, there's a large crack extending through that.

GUEST: Mm.

APPRAISER: So, unfortunately that hurts the monetary value immensely.

GUEST: Right.

APPRAISER: With the damage, I would think that a retail value would be somewhere between $300 and $500.

GUEST: Okay.

APPRAISER: If it were in perfect condition...

GUEST: Yeah.

APPRAISER: ...it would be a lot closer to $2,000 to $3,000.

GUEST: Oh, wow.