We are very grateful to Aileen Dawson, former curator at The British Museum, for kindly donating a commemorative plate, made in celebration of the antique dealership Sampson & Horne, to the Antique Dealer’s Research project. Aileen, incidentally, was married to the antique dealer John P. Smith, who also very kindly donated material to the project back in 2014 and 2015 – here are the Blog Posts highlighting those donations (of Mallett & Sons catalogues in 2015) and in 2014 (of material related to John’s antique dealing business, Regency House Antiques in Walton-on-Thames). John sadly died in 2019.
The commemorative plate was made in 2008 for the Sampson & Horne business in recognition of 40 years of trading by the respective antique dealing businesses, Alistair Sampson Antiques Ltd and Jonathan Horne Antiques Ltd.
Both businesses were founded in 1968, hence, as the commemorative plate indicates on the back, ’40 Years of Trading’ (see below).
Alistair Sampson (1929-2006) and Jonathan Horne (1940-2010) were leading specialists in English pottery, hence the commemorative plate (7.5 inches in diameter), draws stylistically and materially from 17th and 18th century delftware – it even has ‘stilt’ marks on the back, mirroring techniques used to separate plates in the firing kilns in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Sampson began trading in antiques at the Antique Hypermarket in Kensington in London in 1968 (with the dealer David Seligman), before opening a shop at 156 Brompton Road in London. He trained as a lawyer and was also a very well known writer and a regular panellist on the TV show ‘Call My Bluff’ in the 1960s. Horne started trading from Portobello Road antique markets in 1968, and opened his shop at 66c Kensington Church Street, London in 1976. The Sampson and Horne business traded from Mount Street, London, and was formed the year that Alistair Sampson passed away.
We are so grateful to Aileen for donating the plate – it is a fitting reminder of the importance of these leading specialist antiques dealers and a fascinating piece of material culture from the history of the antique trade in Britain.
Mark
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