Of pots and friendship

摘要

Shortly after the Alan and Pat Firth Collection sale last year, and in the aftermath of its media coverage, I received an email from John Mitchell, the owner of eight Hans Coper pots (and a Lucie Rie piece), seeking advice on their cataloguing. The pieces were not for sale; this was more a question of getting them recognised as part of Hans's legacy. John and his partner Sheila loved the pots - it was their recent retirement and move out of London that had prompted the request. The pieces had been inherited on the death of John's mother, Betty, in 1989, but the intriguing story of how the collection came about belongs to her second husband, John's stepfather, a man called Howard Mason.