It’s been close to 20 years since Carltonware set the auction houses of London alight with frenzied bidding, but in early September those heady days were revisited. A coffee service by Miss Violet Elmer – whose life and work we featured in the Spring 2024 issue of Antiques to Vintage magazine – made a new auction record when it sold for $19,400 at Peebles Auction House in the UK.
The coffee set, in the Babylon pattern, comprised a coffee pot, sugar bowl, cream jug and six cups and saucers and was in mint condition. “There were around 20 bidders on the day,” said auctioneer Garry Rennie, “and it sold to a UK bidder via a phone bid, although we believe it is destined for an Australian collector.”
Violet Elmer was brought out of relative obscurity in 2012 after two English Carltonware collectors decided to research her life and work, with the resulting publication titled Cast Aside the Shadows. Only 100 copies of the book were published, but the painstaking research undertaken by the collectors shone a dazzling light on some of the most stunning designs of Art Deco ever produced by Carltonware.
