Life of Spry - Constance Spry and The Fulham Pottery

As first published in Antique Collecting, April 2023.

Long condemned as 'granny-ware' vases by Constance Spry and the Fulham Pottery are back in vogue. With a collection going under the hammer at Catherine Southon Auctioneers this month in Surrey, Hans Pugh takes up the story.

Twenty years ago, bar a few collectors, vases designed by the society florist Constance Spry (1886-1960) and the Fulham Pottery were the stuff of charity shops. Spry might very well have turned the art of flower arranging on its head but, in the years since her height, the mantle vases she designed to house her outré displays were seen as drab and dated.

But their popularity has soared in the last 10 years as fashions in interiors have changed. In 2021, the Garden Museum staged an exhibition of her vases, with their muted colour palate proving a hit everywhere from design magazines to Instagram.

It was the exhibition at the Garden Museum which made Julie Sumner, the owner of the collection which goes under the hammer at Catherine Southon's sale on April 26, fall in love with the style.

She said: "I had a few Constance Spry vases but after visiting the exhibition and seeing how wonderful they look together, I began hunting out more Fulham pottery vases.

"They are incredibly curvaceous, and the unglazed ones are so tactile. The designs are wonderful to arrange flowers in, or even plant up with spring bulbs or plants. They also look great in a modern minimalist setting. Beware though - collecting these vases does become very addictive."

Catherine Southon said of the sale: "With estimates starting at £60 (going up to £2,500 for a vase designed by Constance Spry herself) it is a wonderful opportunity to start, or add to, a collection."

Avant-garde florist

For collectors, the Constance Spry vase not only revolutionised the fortunes of the Fulham Pottery (who made her vases) but was also a major factor in the mass popularisation of flower arranging in the years following the war.

By using everything from Swiss chard to kale leaves, hops and brambles, Spry, changed 20th-century attitudes to flower arranging. But despite her influence, her success came late in life - she only started flower arranging at the age of 41 - and the celebrity circles in which she mixed were a far cry from her early life.

For the full article featured in April 2023 issue, in Antique Collecting magazine.