Lady Charlotte Schreiber started to record her daily purchases in a meticulous manner from April 1873. Was this simply a means to remember the cost and particular provenance of a piece or had she already started to consider that one day she would assemble a complete catalogue of her collection?
It is possible that such detailed accounts of current stock also enabled her to gather details easily together when she wished to sell off particular pieces from her collection. In fact, the first two unpublished Ceramic Memoranda Journals do not include purchase lists; rather they are littered with lists of objects for sale, revealing for the first time the extent to which Charlotte actively purged her collection in the 1860s and 1870s, frequently referring to such pieces as her “weeded goods.” Such a practice is comparable to other contemporary collectors, most notably the connoisseur George Salting (1835–1909), who became great friends with Charlotte after he joined the Burlington Fine Arts Club in 1867. Salting too was known to trade up pieces in order to refine his collection, which gained him the title of “the prince of weeders” by Italian picture connoisseur R.H. Benson.
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In persisting to weed out pieces Charlotte sought to control the quality and quantity of her collection. For example, on October 20, 1869, she bought “a Battersea enameled portrait of George II in bad condition” at the curiosity dealers Butti & Son’s in Edinburgh, but within a few months decided to sell it at a Christie’s auction on March 7, 1870, where it fetched 1 pound 11 shillings. Charlotte used a variety of means to discard these unwanted objects, including an “old china & picture dealer” in Salisbury, Thomas Targett, to whom she gave almost 300 pieces to sell on her behalf between September 1869 and August 1872; a “glass and china dealer” in Lincolnshire, Charles Skinner; and others in Chester and Bristol. She also sold pieces through various dealers abroad, including Eva Krug who took some objects “rejected from our Collection.” Krug successfully sold off the old stock, and a few months later as Charlotte continued to prune her collection, she brought Krug a few more “of our weedings.” The camaraderie between the two women is noteworthy.
Courtesy Lund Humphries, London
Charlotte also sold hundreds of objects through auction: almost 100 pieces at Fargus & Co. in Bristol on February 18, 1870; over 220 pieces at Wilkinson & Sotheby on March 1, 1870; 66 pieces at Christie’s on March 7, 1870; just over 100 pieces at Christie’s on November 22, 1870; and 260 pieces on March 12, 1872, again at Christie’s. Although advertisements for these sales did not always cite Charlotte explicitly, one auction at Sotheby’s on April 12, 1871, which included 85 of her pieces, was advertised as coming from “a well known collector.”
Interestingly, almost two-thirds of the pieces Charlotte sold during this period were classified as English ceramics. This confirms her growing object specialism and indicates a desire to filter out pieces in her possession which were not the best examples of a particular factory—perhaps due to their condition—or if they were duplicates. For instance, on March 7, 1870, at Christie’s, she sold a “Bow figure of Peg Woffington as a Sphinx,” which was #2257 in her collection. Yet, Charlotte decided to keep a pair of the same subject, also by Bow, which she had purchased from the dealer Dalgleish in London in December 1868 and which would later be photographed in William Chaffers’s Keramic Gallery when it was published in 1872.
At times, one wonders if Charlotte ever acquired pieces with the sole intention of reselling them for financial gain. At one point in Paris for example she purchased “950 small pieces—buttons & c ‘for mounting’—Wedgwood” for only 12 shillings. Were these to be sold upon her return to London? If this was the case, the selling of such objects was not always the most fruitful endeavor; for example, she noted that often the remuneration was very little: “the specimens [for sale] are but trifling, only some £10. worth, but they may as well be converted, as every little helps, and the expenses of collecting are great.” Sometimes the reward was greater; for example, at one auction “a seau of Old Sevres china decorated in birds by Ledoux,” which originally cost her 2 pounds 10 shillings, sold for 6 pounds 15 shillings. Incidentally, this piece was more likely painted by Louis-Denis Armand l’aîné, whose painter’s mark of a crescent device was previously attributed to Jean-Pierre Le Doux. At Christie’s on March 12, 1872, Charlotte calculated a total net profit of 72 pounds 17 shillings 2 pence, a substantial sum which was then distributed back into her acquisition funds.
Given the simultaneous manner in which Charlotte actively sold off and continued to add to her collection, it is unsurprising that at times she rediscovered these weeded cast-offs on her travels. At the house of a Miss Potts she notes:
we were amused at finding among her things, as well as in all other collections we visited, some pieces which had once belonged to us, and which, not being good enough for us we had sent down to a sale at Chester about this time twelve months.
A tureen in the form of a rabbit, produced by the Chelsea Porcelain Factory ca. 1755.
©Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The unpublished lists in Charlotte’s Ceramic Memoranda Journals indicate that in addition to selling her own objects she also bought and sold things on behalf of others, such as her children, Lady Hopetoun, Sarah Haliburton, and Mary Glyn. She regularly bought objects on behalf of her son Ivor, even taking photographs to send him of pieces she thought he might like her to acquire. Sometimes she also sold things at his request. For example, she sought out the dealer Schwabe in The Hague to see if he would buy back Ivor’s Delft collection which Schwabe had sold to him in 1862. In exchange for her assistance, Ivor bestowed ceramic gifts upon his mother, including a small beaker “with transfer-printing in black and a rustic scene, woman milking.”
Charlotte also regularly discussed art with her second eldest son Merthyr who, along with his wife Lady Theodora Guest (née Grosvenor) (1840–1924), had similarly caught the collecting bug, particularly for architectural salvage, metalwork, and enamels. Charlotte praised their collection at their home, Inwood, at Henstridge in Somerset, noting that they possessed “chiefly Battersea enamels, of which they have some very good specimens.” A couple of weeks later, Merthyr and Theodora visited Charlotte in London expressly to view her enamels collection and she remarked: “we flew to the enamel cabinets, and saw and talked all we could during the short time they were able to spare, before going off to their train.” Another day, Charlotte took Theodora to see Sarah Haliburton’s collection, and objects were exchanged among the women. Charlotte also loaned pieces from her own collection to her children, keeping meticulous records; for example, 48 pieces were loaned to her daughter Constance in 1870 and returned in July 1873, and over 60 pieces were loaned to Ivor on three separate occasions in 1870, 1873, and 1876.
Given that Charlotte passed so much of her time on collecting trips abroad, she was often tasked with special instructions from friends and acquaintances. The china agent Mortlock once requested if she could “look out for fine dinner services” for him as he had just received a commission from one of the Rothschilds. Once she saw a leather screen and noted that it was “wonderfully decorated with birds in the Oriental style. Lady Marian Alford has asked me to look out for such a one for her, so I wrote to her.” On another trip, Charlotte stated that she “had to execute a commission for Mrs. Haliburton.” Taking this one step further, it is clear that Charlotte positioned herself as a quasi-dealer or “cultural mediator,” expanding her agency as a woman collector. The relationship between Haliburton and Charlotte further confirms this.
A blue jasper-dip plaque by Josiah Wedgwood and Sons, featuring a white relief of Marie Antoinette, ca. 1780–90.
©Victoria and Albert Museum, Londo
Sarah Haliburton was the second wife of a Nova Scotia governor, and she established a good collection of decorative art in Richmond, London. The two were friends, and some of the pieces, which are now part of the Schreiber Bequest at the Victoria and Albert Museum, were gifts from Haliburton to Charlotte over the years. However, the unpublished lists reveal that Charlotte also sold objects for her, going above and beyond what one might expect from a fellow collector or friend. Over the years Charlotte records selling almost 100 pieces belonging to Haliburton, some of which made a substantial profit, such as an “old Worcester dessert service” which Charlotte sold for £53 at Christie’s on March 7, 1870. This was often a stressful process, and at one point Haliburton wrote that “she omitted to send in some of her lots” for an auction which Charlotte was organizing at Sotheby’s which resulted in Charlotte having to write “three letters to-night to rectify her error.” It is interesting to view Charlotte in this rather new light, as a mediator of sorts, happy to assist women collectors in their navigation of the art market. However, it would be an error to view this merely as an act of kindness. Charlotte, one must not forget, was a savvy businesswoman, and while she may have enjoyed performing the role of an agent for other women collectors, she still required financial remuneration. In fact, the archives reveal that Charlotte charged Sarah and perhaps others a 7.5 percent profit on the goods which she sold on their behalf:
sold for others– 43.19
less 7 ½ P Cent’ 3.15
Previous scholarship has implied that due to her “china mania” Charlotte “ransacked Europe” in a blind, frenzied buying spree, with little agenda or strategy. Given everything that we have now established it is no longer possible to think that this was ever the case. Certainly, there were times when Charlotte’s passion for the adventures of collecting and her unwavering desire to possess a particular piece, no matter the cost, dominated her collecting practice. Yet, on the whole, Charlotte worked her way methodically through the dealer shops, private collections, and museums she encountered in each city during her chasse. This thoroughness continued at the end of the day when she documented, numbered, and catalogued her new pieces diligently, some of which would soon find themselves circulating the market as she persisted in weeding out, trading up, and refining her collection. Such a strategic approach not only enabled Charlotte to assemble the best possible collection; it also meant that she could act as a mediator or quasi-dealer for other women collectors, buying and selling objects on their behalf. As she continued to refine her own collection, Charlotte increasingly prioritized the acquisition of ceramics above all else.
A selection of objects from Lady Charlotte Schreiber’s collection.
Courtesy the author
From June 1884, Charlotte spent “most of my time [on] the catalogue which I have now commenced in good earnest.” As historian Clarissa Campbell Orr has argued, the fact that Charlotte produced her own catalogue must be read as “an implicit rebuke to the lingering assumption, even after they were beginning to attend university, that women were less suited than men to the kind of sustained scholarship required by connoisseurship.” Indeed, this catalogue served to demonstrate Charlotte’s commitment to improving the study of the decorative arts by disseminating her knowledge through the representative collection she had formed. By electing herself to write this catalogue, Charlotte acknowledged outwardly the importance of her own connoisseurial expertise, believing she was the best person to undertake the task at hand.
After bequesting her collection to the South Kensington Museum (now the Victoria and Albert Museum) in 1884, Charlotte made a catalogue of the rest of her extant collection, including a complete catalogue of her playing cards and her fans. She also learned how to capture pictures for these catalogues, taking “photographing lessons at the Polytechnic” on Regent Street, and later purchasing her own apparatus to use at home. This strong desire to fully illustrate her collection confirms the importance Charlotte placed on such catalogues as connoisseurial tools. By October 1887, Charlotte received proofs of the first printed fan catalogue from her publisher, John Murray. At this stage, a sense of urgency dominates her journals, shaped by a growing anxiety to catalogue and publish as much of her collection as possible before she died. This was further encouraged by a drastic deterioration in her eyesight. Charlotte attempted to slow the process, undergoing an operation on her left eye on January 8, 1887, and over the next few years she even tried experimental electric shock treatment on her eyes, but sadly to no avail. Charlotte grew increasingly concerned that her “hourly decreasing sight” would prevent her from completing her catalogues.
The Schreiber Collection on view in Room 139 at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, ca. 1980–90.
Courtesy the author
Over time, the Schreiber Bequest has been dispersed across the Victoria and Albert Museum, from the Ceramics, Glass, and Sculpture Galleries, to the Europe Galleries and British Galleries, and even the Prints and Drawings Study Room. Charlotte’s request that the collection should be kept and exhibited together, under the auspices of the mosaic portraits of herself and her husband, Charles, is no longer adhered to, thought to be too far removed from the museological agenda of the 21st-century museum. Following museum protocol, objects from the Schreiber Collection have been redistributed across the museum and are now located in the best spaces for their condition and interpretation, to ensure that they will remain accessible for another 140 years. Yet, in doing so, Charlotte’s dynamic collecting narrative and contribution to ceramics history has been somewhat diluted.
It would appear that this process has been a gradual one, perhaps facilitated by the historiographical landscape which dismissed Charlotte as another female victim of “china mania” rather than crediting her scholarly contributions as a distinguished collector and connoisseur.
In more recent years, the Victoria and Albert Museum has fully refurbished its ceramics galleries. It has moved away from rooms focused on one or two single collections to concentrate instead on the vast global and historical scope of its collection, ranging from 2500 BCE to the present day. In particular, it has created a new set of galleries dedicated to the history of ceramics which seek to improve public understanding of the materials, techniques, and making processes involved in this art form. Surely Charlotte, with her unprecedented interest in technical and material processes, would have championed this approach.
From the book, Lady Charlotte Schreiber, Extraordinary Art Collector. ©Caroline McCaffrey-Howarth, 2025. Published by Lund Humphries. Reprinted with permission. All rights reserved.
