Vintage view: flatback figures

Kya deLongchamps says flatbacks should not be confused with earlier, more expensive figures.

IN the early 18th and 19th centuries good society was in a quiet hysteria for porcelain figurines. Complex to produce, beautifully decorated and screamingly expensive, romantic imaginings in hard paste porcelain by Meissen, Nymphenburg, Chelsea and Derby, were the frosted cherry for the genteel interior of a well cultured home.

Poorer households who could never afford such masterpieces had a ready alternative from the 1800s produced in the potteries of Staffordshire, its surrounding counties and some parts of Scotland.

Rudely resembling porcelain at a leery distance, the clay for these salt-glazed flatbacks was press moulded in two, or sometimes three pieces, and put together with a seam left on show and the back undecorated. Most of the simple painting was done after firing — again as an economy by skilled locals, often women and children.

Designed to sit against the wall on the mantelpiece, flatbacks might have appeared primitive to a more refined eye, but they proved an ideal and affordable vehicle for popular figures in the world of literature, politics and even the stage.

Comforter spaniels were a huge favourite in mirrored pairs with their gilded chain and charming cloudy ears, but the public had a taste for all the scandal and excitement of a wider world. Heroes of the circus, villains of the courtroom; Royal celebrities and animals discovered in exotic faraway places, (and illustrated in the penny papers), jostled for position on the smoked beam over a cottager’s fireplace. Produced in tens of thousands, by the mid-20th century, dealers had difficulty giving these sentimental pieces away. Today, with collector’s clubs worldwide, they are no longer the staid wall flowers of the antique market.

Flatbacks should not be confused with early Staffordshire figures made during the Georgian eras with more expensive glazes and beautifully modelled and painted by craftsmen such as Whieldon and Pratt.

We’re looking for the folk art collectibles, often with a cheerful inattention to accuracy. Zebras that are clearly just striped horses, tiny doughy-faced milkmaids bent beneath humungous cows, and religious characters rendered so cartoonish, only the roughly daubed name gives their identity away.

With time and growing mass production in the later reign of Victoria, flatbacks assumed a more naive slap-dash decoration, the modelling becoming less crisp. Early figures were made in the round with round or square bases, whereas the later and more prolific examples were only finished where they would show, the reverse left blank for a shelf setting.

Bocage, an area of clay formed by hand or pressed through a sieve into sinuous leaves or grass, is a nice addition to a flatback and the first to chip off, if roughly treated.

You can’t go to a boot sale or second hand shop without seeing a garish reproduction of a Staffordshire-type flatback. If you have the chance to handle real pieces, soak up the colour and feel of the glazes and quality — chances are you’ll spot a fake or misdirected reproduction. Moulded from original figures, reproduction figures are about 10% smaller than the original but can be highly convincing.

I remember Judith Miller warning in one of her articles to notice an idiot expression with little facial detail as the first sign of a pottery imposter. Noses do tend to be flat and formless and hands oddly ballooned. There are other signs that mark the good folk from the bad.

Feel the weight of the piece. Is it unnaturally heavy or light? Do the colours seem too bright? Look for even a small chip through the glaze. The body (that’s the clay the piece is made from) should be in a buff earthenware, not a white porcelain. There should be signs of a seam where the two pieces of a 19th century statue have been pressed together and the base should be completely closed with the exception of a small hole.

You may find grit from the kiln and puddles of glaze on an original base too. Smudges of under-glazed cobalt blue are a good sign for a mid 19th century piece.

Extensive crazing throughout the piece, including the underside, is indicative of a late 20th century doing. Genuine pieces may have a little crazing or none at all. Honestly-made celebrations of Staffordshire pieces can and do, fall into unscrupulous hands.

Prices start at around €40 for an unremarkable single figure and expect to pay more than twice for the prize of a matched pair.