Susan Scott
 Susan grew up in
Winnipeg in the 1950s and 1960s and never exhibited any interest in antiques or
collectibles. She graduated from the University of Manitoba with a degree in history and
after a chequered career in publishing, government and retailing, she went to York
University for an M.B.A. The university then hired her to do special projects for the Dean
of Arts and then for the Liaison Office.
Every year while she was working at the university, she would fly over
to England to visit her grandmother. In 1984 on a nostalgia-driven trip to her
grandmother’s old pub in Tynemouth, Susan bought her first piece of twentieth century
English ceramics. The Rington’s tea caddy made by Maling was from the 1929 Northeast
Exhibition in Newcastle with a special lid and cost _75. She also bought the first book
on Maling Ware at the same time. This desire for information as well as examples led her
to the Potteries Museum in Hanley.
For over ten years Susan has been going to Stoke-on-Trent every fall
and sitting in the library going through old issues of the Pottery Gazette and Pottery
and Glass Record. She xeroxed hundreds of old advertisements and built up a library of
information on dozens of English factories. She joined collectors clubs -- Susie Cooper,
Clarice Cliff, Poole Pottery, Moorcroft Pottery, Chintz China, Carlton Ware, Shelley,
Radford, Cornish Ware and learned from all the members and their collections. She
corresponded with the head of the chintz collectors in California and weekly telephone
calls led to a meeting in England. Susan and Linda Eberle became friends and agreed to
collaborate on a chintz book – Linda supplied the photographs and Susan the research.
The first book sold out in a month in 1995 and the second edition sold out early in 1998.
The third edition of Susan's chintz book came out 1999. To order an
autographed copy, go to the order
form on ChintzNet. Susan is now gathering information for the fourth edition scheduled for publication in 2002.
She met a group of people at the first Clarice Cliff Convention she
attended back in 1992. They now meet every year in November for the Clarice Cliff auction
at Christie’s South Kensington in London and a weekend of antique markets and dinner
in Soho.
In 1995 Susan wrote to Canadian House & Home suggesting
story ideas and the editor asked for a page on chintz ware. This led to a monthly
‘hot collectibles’ column which has introduced Susan to dozens of passionate
collectors of egg cups, corkscrews, granite ware, Japanese kitsch, post cards,
telephones….
She loves the pursuit, the getting up at 4am and heading off to the
outdoor antique markets in the hopes of finding treasure. She was invited to join a group
of American collectors and dealers for the Newark International Antique Fair in England
back in 1994. In those days the fair allowed dealers to open the back of their vans and
sell while waiting in line. Susan and the reporter from the New York Times wandered around
in the dark as the mist rose from the ground. The flashlights and beams from miners’
helmets would reveal a face here, antique there – one of those experiences you can
never forget.
The fun of researching the 20th century is the people and
the objects are readily accessible. Susan has interviewed elderly women who worked in the factories in Stoke
and still keeps in touch with Ivy Mayer, the former secretary to the Export Director at
Royal Winton. Ivy answered an advertisement Susan placed in the local papers in
Staffordshire and gave Susan all kinds of information about the export of English
ceramics.
In the same way, 20th century objects are often
unappreciated and forgotten in the back of cupboards. One woman wrote to Susan asking
about a stacking teapot in a rare pattern which her mother had bought forty years ago as a
teenager on a family holiday in Niagara Falls. When Susan told her what the going price
was for her pot, the woman was overjoyed. "My mother really needs a new furnace she
said and that teapot has been in her closet for over 20 years." Another dealer told
Susan that when she went to do a house clearing, the son had put together a box for the
charity shops. When she looked in the box it was filled with chintz and she sold it off
for hundreds of dollars.
She has been carefully assembling Royal Doulton Bunnykins for her
two-year-old grandson and the lessons she has learned from all her research have been
useful. She has bought the collector plates only available for a year and the limited
edition bunnies. She hopes that by the time Gabriel is 18, he can either keep his
collection or sell it to finance his university education.
For more on Susan please see:
The articles section
The 1998 Collecting the 20th Century Event
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