Yates-Owen and Fournier BSPM Archive

So my Christmas present this year was the British Studio Pottery Marks archive, collected and collated by Eric Yates-Owen and Robert Fournier. I had a tip off it was coming up for auction in December at Bearnes Hampton & Littlewood in Exeter so I popped a large absentee bid on it and won it! Made a round trip from Hampshire to collect 8 large filing boxes containing the correspondence with the authors in the first two editions, plus annotated/corrected copies of the first two editions of the BSPM books. From those books, it seems the initial set of potters were taken from Muriel Rose’s Artist Potters in England, and from Geoffrey Godden’s Encyclopaedia of British Pottery and Porcelain Marks. Presumably more were gleaned from Emmanuel Cooper’s Potters, The Illustrated Directory of Fellows and Members of the Craft Potters Association, published annually by the CPA. It would be interesting to know their selection process. One potter recalls seeing an advert in the late 90s while she was at College, asking potters to submit their marks to Eric Yates-Owen. Personally, I add any potter or ceramic artist who is selling their work, even if they call themselves a hobby potter and their sales are via local craft fairs, Etsy or personal websites. I’m especially keen on anything with a label from the 60s-70s; the dark ages of studio potters, who were lured out to Wales, Northern England and Scotland by the Craft Councils, and retired, died or went abroad before their details could be recorded. If anything happens to me I’ve instructed my next of kin to pass the Yates-Owen/Fournier paperwork to the Aberystwyth University’s ceramics archive. At some point I’d better let the archive know!