Henry Sandon MBE: Mr Worcester himself

Not since Mr Lea and Mr Perrins launched a certain sauce on an unsuspecting world has there been such a high profile name linked to Worcestershire. For over 40 years Henry Sandon has championed Worcester Porcelain and Worcestershire to millions of people through his television work. We meet Mr Worcester himself!

Words: Rachel Crow, Photographs: Stuart Purfield.

The elder statesman of The Antiques Roadshow and world expert on Worcester Porcelain, Henry Sandon MBE has long been an enthusiastic advocate for the city and, of course, its pots. "If there goes a day and I haven't bought a pot it's terrible. I feel empty. I like having pots in my hand; it's like a comforter really," smiles Henry warmly, as we sit chatting in the Worcester Porcelain Museum on Severn Street, where he was curator for 17 years from 1966.

A well known face from over 40 years on our TV screens, first on the antiques programme Going For A Song with Arthur Negus, and then the BBC Antiques Roadshow on which he has been solving pot mysteries for the last 32 years, the 81-year-old chuckles away as he recounts tales of his days working at the museum and the many interesting characters and skilled artists and craftspeople he met and who would become close friends.

"Some of them were terribly exciting and interesting people," he explains. Henry's constant companion on his many antique hunting trips over the years, his diminutive wife Barbara interjects with the occasional comment and sensing the next anecdote before her jovial husband's even managed to stifle his chuckles to repeat it, laughs before cue. "I went to school in this building until I was 11 years old," says Barbara who also worked at the museum during Henry's curatorship. Worcester, born and bred, Barbara was a former pupil at St Peter's School which stood on the site that has been occupied by the museum since 1967.

"Most of the workers at the porcelain factory came to this school, of course," adds Henry, with a nod of his head towards the remaining ghosts of the world-renowned and former industrious Royal Worcester factory site next door. "They were all born within a ring of this place. You came to this school and you automatically came to this job. Worcester certainly did make the finest porcelain of all and that's why it's such a tragedy to see what it's become now," adds Henry with a shake of his head at the closure of the factory. Henry moved to Worcester in 1953 to teach music at the Royal Grammar School, he also sang in the Cathedral choir where he was a lay clerk for many years. It was after meeting Barbara that he became interested in ceramics and pots.

Conducting mini-excavations in the garden of their former home near the Cathedral, he became intrigued by the fragments of Roman pots he found and began to learn all he could. "I learnt it all myself and just dug in the ground and got my fingers dirty. I didn't go to university and that's how you did it in those days," Henry explains. And this was to be the same way their son, John, Director of European Ceramics and Glass at Bonhams and regular face on Antiques Roadshow, learnt too.

Graduating towards Worcester Porcelain, Henry was over the course of the next decade to establish himself as the leading expert on Royal Worcester, which had been

produced in the heart of the historic city since 1751. Through undertaking a large series of excavations of the original factory site by the river - now home to the Technical College - he confirmed the origins of many pieces the provenance of which had been in doubt until that point. "It caused a bit of consternation that sometimes I was finding things that shouldn't have been Worcester or weren't acceptable as being

Worcester," he adds with a chuckle. "[Charles William] Dyson Perrins (of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire Sauce family fame) the great owner of the Worcester factory and founder of the current museum, thought that everything marvellous must be Worcester, and anything second rate must be from elsewhere, but what I was finding sometimes flew in the face of that."

But for Henry, the greatest allure of all about Worcester Porcelain was learning of the human stories behind the beautiful pieces, the finest examples of which are displayed in the museum which houses the world's largest collection of Worcester Porcelain. "Being a local thing, I suppose it was particularly interesting to me. I became fascinated with it and when I became curator at the museum, I was able to mingle with and meet all of these great makers, artists and modellers and I talked to them and

learnt all their histories and stories. "Some were in their eighties and nineties and were allowed to go on working as long as they wanted. It was marvellous: with one little step back they were able to take me back to the 19th century and their masters, who were taught by the masters of the 18th century. All this history and I gobbled it up. I wanted to show their lives and work in a human way, what people were like

and what their lives were like and how they lived. That, I think, adds to the interest and understanding in the pot. It's like learning about a painter and why he did funny things, such as Picasso; that way you get such a tremendous grasp about a piece. Pots will always tell us their own story if you let them."

Henry speaks with great warmth of the great artists whose work he particularly admires. "There was Harry Davies, who I regard as one of the greatest china painters. He let me sit by him and watch him paint and tell me stories. I was almost a son to him in way. And Doris Lindler, the great modeller of horses who was very cantankerous and swore like a navvy," he chuckles. "She would rampage around the factory in the morning and the Directors were terrified of her. She was a great character. Barbara and I used to go and have tea with her often, so I started to see a different aspect to her pots. Doris modelled dogs arvellously but had such an ndisciplined dog herself who used to jump on the table and eat the cake.

"They were terribly interesting people, the gilders in particular, and let me behind their doors to see their secrets and I learnt as much as I could. All of this was written down in my books and I tried to bring them to life. And I hope I did." As we walk around the galleries of the museum, Henry points out some of his favourite pieces while providing fascinating anecdotes about the makers or their work, such as the amazingly intricate work of George Owen, whose technique of cutting tiny holes in the porcelain created a delicate, lace effect. "It's mind-blowing work and he was one of the greatest craftsmen of all time. People have tried to do it since and can't. He worked behind locked doors and wouldn't tell anyone how he did it," reveals Henry, before moving on to a display case of work by the Stinton family

"Five generations worked at the Porcelain factory; at one time there were three generations in one room. I knew Harry who like his father painted Highland Cattle, but they never visited Scotland in their lives," he laughs. "They got all the images from postcards and because the cattle were always pictured standing in long grass they didn't know what their feet looked like so always painted them in long grass." It's easy to get infected by the same fascination with the subject when hearing it from one who has so much knowledge and insight into Worcestershire's gifted craftspeople.

"All of the periods of Worcester Porcelain fascinate me," Henry continues. "There were many marvellous times and some outstanding work produced. By the end of the 18th century it became a very fine factory indeed and the work was superb. The 1930s to '70s was also one of the great periods of Worcester Porcelain when they were making incredible things. That's why it's so sad to see in the last dozen or so years it take a decided drop down, sourcing from abroad, and then the craft went from here. It is a terrible, terrible shame. It's a major slice of Worcester life and without the porcelain works here, Worcester feels empty. You may as well take the Cathedral away; it's as much a part of Worcester as that. For many people Worcester is Worcester Porcelain."

But of course the pots will live on and the museum will remain as a constant reminder of this important piece of the city's heritage. "I'm enormously proud of having been a curator here," Henry notes, still actively involved along with Barbara as patrons of the museum. And this is where Henry's great popularity as a familiar face of television will hopefully help the museum to survive in the difficult times it will face following the closure of the factory. As he chuckles beside a life-size cut-out of himself, delivered that day to take pride of place at the entrance of the museum, Henry agrees how the TV work changed his life. "I owe it all to television. I was a quiet little curator, quite happy here before all of that started, and now people jump on me all of the time. But they all think I am Arthur Negus!" he laughs. "I did admire him of course because it was he who brought me into it."

Henry is also doing his bit to keep the tradition of Worcester porcelain skills alive through his involvement in Bronté Porcelain in Malvern. Opened over ten years ago and employing some of the skilled artists and craftspeople who worked at Worcester, it produces elaborate porcelain sculptures. "I think people are slowly waking up to the fact that quality is important and it's better buying something good that will last. So there are great skills in Worcestershire still, but they have to be supported and one hopes they will survive."

Henry Sandon's Worcester Life

What are your favourite areas of the city?

I like the Porcelain area, of course, and the Cathedral because I was lay clerk there for 25 years and Barbara and I were married there, so it is important to us. I like the Guildhall and some of the old streets, like Friar Street, where Barbara used to have a house - now flattened under a multi-storey car park! Worcester has changed since I moved here, not always for the better, but it's still pretty fine.

Is there anything about the city that you would change?

Dare I say some of the nightclubs on a Friday and Saturday night! I hope the University is going to change things for the better. They have given me an honorary degree which I'll be collecting in November.

Do you have a favourite restaurant?

We like the King Charles II Restaurant (New Street). The owner there knows us well and will put a pan on for the spaghetti when I get there calling: "Your usual, Henry?" The meals are huge, but I was brought up during the Twenties and Thirties when you never wasted anything, so have to eat it all up.

Where's the best place to pick up an antique?

Worcester is a good place for antiques. There's a whole ream of antiques shops along The Tything, and also Bygones of Worcester is marvellous and the charity shops too. There are now no auctions in Worcester, which is a shame. They used to be good fun and I used to pick up some marvellous things hidden beneath rubble in a rural country auction in a farmyard or something. Everything now is on the internet and prices go up, so it's a shocking life for the likes of me now!

Henry Sandon MBE: Mr Worcester himself

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