Freindship Query for the The Holland & Bromley UK Figurine Collective

by Jack Hart

Hi Peter - I am a client member of Figurine Collective.
I have the subject figurine in my collection together with a personally signed by yourself Certificate. It has a strange limited edition number of 6574 when part of a 995 special edition - could you please enlighted me, I think I must be missing something.
Also are you please able to confirm that your have indeed signed personally this certificate as being authentic - I thank you kindly. I hope I have uploaded correctly to you the scanned certificate.
Looking forward to my Kate figurine have paid my deposit.
Also are you asking for deposits yet for "English Garden" & "Wills & Kate".
My kindest regards Jack
I also bought two prototype figurines from you via EBay about a year ago, one was a man in an armchair - you may recall.
Bye for now.
Jack Hart

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Reply by Peter Holland (Ceramic Sculptor)

Dear Jack

Lovely to hear from you. I hope you are keeping well and enjoying our website and artwork. John Bromley has been very busy with his Kate figurine and I have been doing my Staffordshire ‘flatback’ tribute to the young couple. We are looking for a particular look on the clay body, under-glaze and decoration of this piece, which is why it is taking time in the development. Sorry about the wait – but I can assure you it will be worth it.

I am currently doing something quite momentous - my first Celtic design since I parted company with Compton & Worcester and Worcester. As you may know, we parted company with our old colleagues at those two firms because, as their production switched from the UK to China, Taiwan and Malaysia, we could no longer oversee quality and detail as before – which was only going to one way (.....BUMP!). I must say, I have been paying careful attention to the development of Kate, helping John and Tony with some of the fine tuning of the decoration and so on, and I think I can safely say she is totally fantastic – I have never been so proud of one of our pieces. What a memento of the day! I bet you are as excited as we are. This ones a winner.

Anyway, onto your queries. The signature on the figure is definitely mine, no question, and the certificate is a genuine Compton & Woodhouse one, no question. So rest assured there. With Compton, I did not personally control the editions and all the colleagues I worked with there are long gone, so I can’t ask them. Tony was main man at Compton and he is now our main man, but he didn’t oversee this particular figure. What he thinks is, the numbers mean is they did a total edition of this figure of 6574 (not sure why this is such a funny number). They then took 995 of this number and made a different colourway – which is your figure. As I say, the numbers are an unusual way for them to do it, but I have no idea why they did it this way on this figure. The old MD Rinalda Ward, often had flights of fancy where she suddenly wanted a new colourway done for her collectors. When she was in situ, the company was quite something special. When she retired, the company went into free-fall, which is when me and John had to get out and re-connect with our collectors properly again. I am very pleased with the Holland & Bromley UK Figurine Collective. What a blessing to be able to talk directly to our esteemed collectors like yourself.

By the way, the couple of one off pieces you have are the only ones that exist in the world and were individually hand-made at the Barlaston factory of Wedgwood. Now that’s what I call a small edition. Keep this email as evidence of the provenance of these items, it might be important one day.

Best regards

Peter Holland, Ceramic Sculptor