Starting a Ceramics Collection Without Spending a Fortune

Starting a ceramics collection sounds like something you need money for. It is not. Pottery is one of the few areas of art where a genuinely good piece by a working maker can still cost less than a night out for four, and where the thing you buy gets used rather than stored.

Buy the piece you keep picking up

The first rule is boring and it is the only one that really matters. Buy what you want to live with. People starting a ceramics collection often try to buy strategically, guessing at what will hold value. They end up with a shelf of pieces they respect and do not love.

A pot is a physical object. Pick it up. Feel the weight of it, the balance, whether the handle sits into your hand or fights it. A well made vessel feels lighter than it looks. If you are buying online, ask for the weight and the dimensions, because a photograph flattens all of that out.

What to look at before you buy

• The foot. Turn it over. A carefully trimmed foot ring tells you the maker cared about the part nobody sees.
• The rim. Run a finger round it. It should be even and it should feel finished.
• The inside. On a bowl the interior is most of what you see once it is on a table.
• The join between glaze and bare clay. A clean line there is a sign of a tidy maker.

Where the money actually goes

Price in ceramics tracks time and risk more than it tracks fame. A piece with gold lustre costs more because it has been through the kiln a third time and could have failed at that last stage. A large vessel costs more because large forms warp and crack at a much higher rate, so the maker is pricing in the ones that did not survive.

This is useful to know when starting a ceramics collection, because it tells you where value sits. A small piece with complicated surface work often carries more skill than a large plain one at the same price.

The two expensive mistakes

The first is buying a set. Sets look sensible and they lock you into one maker and one moment. Buy single pieces and let the shelf assemble itself.

The second is buying only from galleries. Galleries do real work and they earn their commission, but a lot of the best value in Australian ceramics is bought directly from makers at open studios and markets. You also get to ask questions, which is how you learn what you like.

Where to actually buy

Open studio weekends are the best value in the country and the least known. Makers open up once or twice a year, prices are direct, and you see the kiln and the test tiles and the failures stacked in a corner. Ask the maker which piece they would keep. They will tell you, and it is almost never the one you expected.

Craft markets are more variable and worth a slow walk. Anyone starting a ceramics collection should go once without money, just to look, and come back the following month. The pieces that are still in your head four weeks later are the ones to buy.

Online works fine once you know what you like. Ask for the weight, extra photographs of the foot and rim, and a note on any crazing. A maker who answers all three carefully is a maker who packs carefully too.

Give yourself a theme, eventually

You do not need one when starting a ceramics collection. After a dozen pieces, though, most people find a thread appearing. It might be a colour, or vessels of one particular shape, or work from one region. Following that thread is what turns a pile of nice objects into a collection.

Frances Smith's work groups itself that way. The Bush Tucker vessels take native food plants as their subject. The Handbag series is a joke that turned into a form worth developing. The Australiana pieces are all built around local flora. Any one of those is a coherent place to start. You can see how they sit together on the artist profile.

Keep a record

Write down what you paid, who made it, and when and where you bought it. Do it at the time, because you will not remember in five years. A photograph on your phone and a note is enough.

This matters more than people expect. If you ever insure the collection, sell part of it or pass it on, the record is the difference between a collection and a cupboard. The Art Gallery of NSW collection is a good place to see how pieces are catalogued, and the same basic fields work just as well for a shelf of twenty pots.

Condition and provenance

Note the condition when you buy, even if the piece is perfect. Write down that it is perfect. Two years later, when you spot a chip, you will want to know whether it arrived that way. Photograph the foot and the rim as well as the front.

Provenance sounds grand and mostly means knowing where a thing came from. For living makers it is easy. You bought it from the maker at a particular market, or from a named gallery on a named date. Write that down and the piece keeps its story. Pieces without a story are the ones that end up in a box labelled miscellaneous.

Starting a ceramics collection with one piece

Pick one piece you like, use it every day, and see how you feel about it in six months. That single test teaches you more about your own taste than any amount of reading. When you are ready for the second, have a look at what is currently available.