Staffordshire Figures: What Pairs Are Worth and Why

I bought my first pair of Staffordshire flatback figures in 1998, at an auction in Leek, for 85 pounds. A pair of King and Queen figures from around 1860, in good if not immaculate condition, hand-painted, obviously period. I still have them. Their market value now is roughly 220 pounds, which is not a spectacular return over 27 years, but they were bought for the shelf rather than the ledger.

The Staffordshire figure market is one of the categories where the money made is often in avoiding losses rather than making gains. It is possible to lose a great deal of money buying reproductions confidently. It is also possible, if you know what you are doing, to buy genuine period pieces at prices that have not moved much in twenty years, which means real terms they have fallen.

What Staffordshire figures actually are

The generic term covers a specific type of pottery figure produced in the Staffordshire potteries region of England from roughly 1780 to 1900. These are not porcelain. They are earthenware, mostly moulded rather than modelled, decorated in bright enamel colours over a lead glaze. They were the popular art of Victorian Britain, sold from market stalls and travelling pedlars, and produced in enormous quantities.

The classic form is the flatback, so called because the back is flat and undecorated, designed to sit against a mantelpiece or wall. Flatbacks were the volume product, sold cheaply and used decoratively. This is where most collectors focus.

There are also fully modelled figures, sometimes called round figures, which were more expensive when new and are generally more valuable now. These are the earlier products of named potteries like Ralph Wood and Enoch Wood, and they command properly serious money.

The subjects are almost anything: royalty, generals, actors, prizefighters, animals, and scenes from popular novels and plays. Contemporary events drove the market; a figure of a general who had just won a battle would be in production within weeks of the news reaching Staffordshire.

The reproduction problem, which is severe

Staffordshire figures have been reproduced continuously since the 1920s, and the reproduction market is enormous. Modern reproductions from the 1970s onwards are particularly common and particularly deceptive. Some of them have now been aged deliberately for four or five decades and are hard to spot.

The tells, in order of reliability:

The base and the potting. Genuine Victorian Staffordshire figures were made by pressing clay into two-part moulds, then joining the halves with slip and firing. The join is visible on the base as a small irregular seam, and the base itself is often uneven, sometimes with tool marks from the potter smoothing it after the piece was joined. Reproductions are usually slip-cast in single-piece moulds, which produces a smoother, more uniform base without the characteristic joining seam.

The glaze crazing. Genuine period pieces have craze lines that developed over decades, running in irregular natural patterns, sometimes with soft brown discolouration where the crazing has picked up dust. Reproduction crazing, when it is present at all, is usually more regular and often stops abruptly at edges where genuine crazing would continue.

The enamel colours. Victorian enamels, particularly the reds and pinks, have a specific chalky quality that is hard to replicate exactly. Reproduction enamels are usually slightly brighter and more uniform, and sit on the glaze rather than sinking slightly into it. Look at the edges of the coloured areas with a loupe: on genuine pieces the colours have soft edges where they meet the white ground, on reproductions the edges are cleaner and more mechanical.

The weight. This is a subtle one. Genuine Victorian pieces feel slightly heavy for their size because the clay bodies were denser. Reproductions feel lighter and often more hollow. This is not a definitive test but is often the first thing that alerts an experienced dealer.

What genuine pieces are worth

The market for Staffordshire is stratified. At the top, the earliest and rarest pieces (Ralph Wood family works from the 1780s, for example) fetch four and five figures. At the bottom, common Victorian flatbacks in poor condition can be bought for 30 or 40 pounds.

The middle of the market, where most collectors operate, is roughly:

Common flatback figures, single figures of anonymous subjects, in good condition, 60 to 180 pounds. Prices have been essentially flat for twenty years.

Named subjects, meaning identifiable individuals or scenes from known works, add a premium. A single figure identifiable as a specific royal or a specific actor sits at 150 to 500 pounds depending on the subject and the popularity of the source material.

Pairs, meaning matched pairs of figures made to be displayed together, are worth substantially more than the sum of the individuals. A matched pair of flatbacks in good condition might fetch 250 to 600 pounds, where the same figures singly would total 180 to 400.

Rare subjects, meaning short-lived production runs or unusual sitters, can rise dramatically. A pair of figures commemorating a specific incident that happened in a particular year is often the trophy piece for that year, and prices reflect it.

Signed or attributable pieces, meaning work that can be tied to a specific pottery or artist, are the top of the market. Anything with a mark on the base pointing to a named maker deserves specialist attention before sale.

The advice most reference books get wrong

Almost every reference book on Staffordshire tells you that the presence of colour under the base indicates a Victorian piece. This is partly true but is often used to dismiss genuine unmarked pieces incorrectly.

The reality is that base colouring practices varied enormously between potteries and periods, and some perfectly genuine mid-Victorian pieces have completely uncoloured bases. The presence of colour on the base is a positive indicator but the absence of it is not a negative indicator. This is one of the many places where reference books, written by earlier specialists working with more limited evidence, have propagated errors that get repeated for decades.

The other place where common advice is misleading concerns Victorian pieces with restoration. Standard advice is to avoid restored pieces. In practice, honestly restored pieces from good specialists can be excellent value, because the restoration discount is often larger than the actual reduction in quality. A figure with a professionally restored broken finger is not fundamentally different from one without, and if the restoration is disclosed, the price reflects the work rather than the condition of the underlying piece.

I would rather buy a properly restored good piece than a mediocre one with no history of restoration. The Staffordshire market is one of the categories where a bit of pragmatism about condition rewards the patient buyer.