Property of the Late Hugo Morley-Fletcher MA FSA (1940-2022) (lots 1-64)
The following 64 lots...

Property of the Late Hugo Morley-Fletcher MA FSA (1940-2022) (lots 1-64)

The following 64 lots belonged to the late Hugo Morley-Fletcher, the great European Ceramics specialist who worked at Christie’s for over 40 years and appeared on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow for over 25 years.

Hugo was born in 1940 and spent the Second World War in his mother’s family’s ancestral home, Yester House near Edinburgh. Yester was built between 1699 and 1728 for the Marquesses of Tweeddale. In 1729 the 4th Marquess commissioned William Adam to carry out alterations, particularly to the interiors, but William died before the work was completed, and it wasn’t until his sons Robert and John Adam resumed work on it in 1759 that it was completed in the early 1760s. Yester is one of Scotland’s finest houses and its architecture, plasterwork and contents had a profound impact upon Hugo. His mother was also a talented sculptor, so art was in his blood. Shortly after his grandfather the 11th Marquess died in the late 1960s, the house was sold, along with a lot of the contents. The first fourteen lots in Roseberys’ Old Master, British & European Pictures sale on 12^th March once hung on the walls at Yester and depict Hugo’s ancestors, amongst other subjects.

Hugo had his own rather eccentric aristocratic style and sense of panache in tandem with an unerring confidence; this was off-putting to some, but utterly captivating to others. Working with Hugo at Christie’s was, at times, a little challenging, but it was certainly never dull. He loved wearing his green loden cape that he had bought in Vienna, yet paradoxically, Hugo always retained his sense of Britishness. On one occasion, over 20 years ago, when we were in a tiny railway station in the middle of nowhere in Germany, we were struggling to get a ticket machine to work when a local kindly intervened to help. He then asked if we had been there the previous year. When we confirmed that we had, and asked why he asked, he replied that he remembered Hugo’s red socks!

Hugo had a natural eye for art, frequently cutting straight to the key points of an object. His understanding extended beyond ceramics to encompass pictures and other decorative arts, and he had the ability to identify the best artwork in a room filled with things, whether it was ceramic or something different. He had a prodigious memory, priding himself in his ability to memorise the position of objects within a client’s house and retain that memory many years after the visit. He also had the ability to give a summary value of a collection after only the briefest of visits. He was often generous with his knowledge, but on other occasions would withhold it as a test. The study groups of saucers and small objects in this sale illustrate some of the fascinating complexities found in ceramics, and they would be an excellent vehicle for teaching.

Hugo was a fine linguist and was completely untroubled by taking auctions in a variety of different languages. He also had a natural curiosity and understanding of other cultures, and Continental friends and clients were frequently surprised and impressed by his knowledge of both their history and current affairs, which often surpassed their own. His almost encyclopaedic knowledge of Royal and aristocratic families in Britain and the Continent meant that he understood how these families and historical events shaped the creation of ceramics of time, and as he once reminded me, with the creation of ceramics, ‘there is always someone writing a cheque’.

Hugo was a tour-de-force in the ceramics world, publishing a number of specialist books included Investing in English Pottery and Porcelain (1968), Meissen (1970), Meissen in Colour (1971) and the Pflueger collection of Early European Porcelain and Faience (1994) and was also was also one of the founding member of the French Porcelain Society. When he joined Christie’s in 1963 the market was dominated by Sotheby’s under the auspices of the great Tim Clarke. By the 1970s Hugo had reversed this. Two of the iconic sales of the 1970s were a highly important collection which was sold anonymously in March and October 1977, making a huge amount of money at the time. These were followed by many others.

Later in his life Hugo became Prime Warden of the Worshipful Company of Dyers in the City of London which ushered in his charitable work with the Boucher Church of England Primary School, a disadvantaged school in East London. Hugo gave lessons in French and Latin, and in particular he was keen to promote reading, instigating the practice of the Dyers to donate a book to every pupil of the school each year.

Text courtesy of Dominic Simpson, Consultant and former Head of European Ceramics at Christie’s.

A Meissen porcelain Kakiemon baluster small coffee-pot or hot-water jug and cover, c.1735, blue crossed swords mark, Dreher’s incised cross and impressed four dots mark, of quatrefoil section, the triple-scroll lozenge-section handle with a projecting scroll thumbpiece, two panels of the body painted with flowering shrubs enriched in gilding, alternating with iron-red panels reserved with white scrolls centred by gilt flowerheads, on a short stepped quatrefoil foot, the domed quatrefoil cover similarly decorated, 19cm high

Provenance:
Dr Marcel and Frau Nyffeler Collection sale; Christie’s, London, 9 June 1986, lot 148.
Property of the late Hugo Morley-Fletcher MA FSA (1940-2022).

Note: This unusual design is a variant of a slightly earlier design of a few years earlier, referred to in the footnote to the Chelsea tea bowl and saucer decorated with a related design.