Lot 552 , A large collection of a Japanese Ceramics and Works of Art sale catalogues, Sotheby's, New Bond Street, London, October 1983 to April 1993 and Christie’s, King Street, London Japanese, February 1974 to March 1993.

A large collection of a Japanese Ceramics and Works of Art sale catalogues, Sotheby's, New Bond Street, London, October 1983 to April 1993 and Christie’s, King Street, London Japanese, February 1974 to March 1993. Provenance - D. C. Monk & Son, 132-134 Kensington Church Street, London, auction catalogue archive

A little over one hundred years ago, in 1924, my Grandfather took the job of manager with a firm of pawnbrokers based at 132-134 Kensington Church Street, ‘J Fitch’. Mr Fitch, who some years before had bought the business previously trading there, had died and things were in the hands of his son, Tresham, and his widow, a dominant presence. Tresham Fitch was not very committed and indeed spent much of his time in the Macaulay Arms across the road leaving my Grandfather to take charge, so much so that when about ten years later the family decided to sell the business my Grandfather made an offer to buy it himself and Mrs Fitch accepted. He moved with his family to the Flat above the shop and ‘D.C. Monk’ was later to be inscribed on the sign board. Like most pawnbrokers ‘Fitches’ sold various antique and second hand items including silver, jewellery, books and clothing. There was very little china though and a picture of the shop painted in 1935, the year my Grandfather took over, shows just a small table displaying it. My Grandfather seems to have thought that porcelain was preferable to paper and began buying rather more of it. The china sold well and when war broke out in 1939 he was doing a steady trade which then suddenly began to boom. Many his pieces might have only been second hand, but in the war years nothing much was available new so ‘Monks’ became a popular source even supplying Harrods.

My Father joined the business in 1944 and combined pawnbroking with porcelain, concentrating rather more on the antique than the nearly new. From 1945, foreign dealers started to appear, Americans, of course, but in those days Europeans were equally strong buyers and Italians in particular. Stories are told of piles of eighteenth century Chinese plates on the floor which had to be navigated carefully and by repute, ‘Monks’ were even a major source of transitional wares. Recollections may vary here, but it is certainly the case that huge quantities of antique porcelain, Oriental, English and Continental, came and went. In common with many, my Father had a large clientele of dealers with a truly international reach. I was to meet some of them myself making a start in the 1960s when I used to help out at weekends or during school holidays. As the market developed and the prices rose it became necessary to specialise and we chose to focus on the Oriental pieces which we really liked the best and they had become the core of our business when I joined my Father fifty years ago after leaving university, the pawnbroking stock having been sold some years before. There then followed many happy if sometimes challenging years. New clients replaced the old ones and not just traders. We found ourselves making an increasing number of private sales which was both enjoyable and rewarding. My Grandfather’s death, though, caused things to get into an enormous tangle and as a result we had to leave ‘132-134’, our ‘home’ for so many years, in 1993. It was hard to know how to follow on from this but eventually we took a space in the nearby Antiques Centre. As much an office as a shop it served us well and allowed me to travel the country in search of stock, now much more easily discoverable with the evolution of online catalogues. We continued in this way until 2010 when my father retired and I joined a newly established firm of online auctioneers finding myself building a rapidly expanding Oriental department. D.C. Monk and Son, then, only managed 75 years, but by a coincidence, when we shut the shop for the last time, my Father and I had done exactly one hundred years between us. Some form of a centenary then. I regard myself as essentially retired myself now and it seems appropriate to release a selection from the large quantity of catalogues which we managed to accumulate over the years. My warm thanks to Gorringes for helping me to do this. For anyone interested, it provides a snapshot of the UK Oriental market at its zenith in the last years of the twentieth century (with a few international sales thrown in and some later additions from my time as an auctioneer). The volume and quality of the merchandise available seems quite arresting now, with relatively little need to look out for modern reproductions and copies. They were the best of times without too much of the worst and I count myself very lucky to have had the experience of them.
£80-120

Sold for £40