LIVERPOOL, ENGLAND — Ceramics dealer Roderick “Rod” John Jellicoe died on February 4, aged 70.
Rod was born on January 25, 1954. He specialized in English porcelain for more than four decades as both dealer and academic consultant. His company, English Porcelain, has been in existence for the last 27 years. A large part of Rod’s career was spent in London, interspersed with attending antiques fairs in the United Kingdom and America. More recently, the business had been successfully trading online via the website www.englishporcelain.com and also by appointment. Rod was available to advise clients and institutions on the acquisition and appraisal of new pieces for their collections. Also, he was happy to share his knowledge with a wider audience by way of lectures and seminars.
A member of the English Ceramic Circle, the American Ceramic Circle and a committee member of the Northern Ceramic Society, Rod was involved in staging exhibitions and producing catalogs for original research projects such as Isleworth Porcelain and The Liverpool Porcelain of William Reid, the first potter to advertise the sale of Liverpool porcelain, which are seminal reference works. He was an expert on the early factories that supplied porcelain to the American colonies and John Bartlam’s short-lived enterprise in South Carolina. In February 2018, a teapot attributed to the John Bartlam factory at Cain Hoy in South Carolina — the only known porcelain teapot by the Bartlam concern and therefore the earliest known American porcelain teapot — was sold at the auction house Woolley and Wallis for a record $800,000, including premium. It was bought in the room by Rod on behalf of the Metropolitan Museum in New York.
American ceramics expert Robert Hunter, editor of Ceramics in America at the Chipstone Foundation and co-author of “John Bartlam: America’s First Porcelain Manufacturer,” which appeared in the 2007 edition of the ceramics journal, said he participated in early stages of bidding for the unique object. “No one knows the total output of Bartlam,” he said after the sale, “but an $800,000 price will surely elevate his stature and promote more research.”
Of Rod, Hunter, who noted that he and Rod go back 25 years or more, wrote, “One of the brightest lights in the ceramics world passed away and perhaps the nicest and kindest person I have ever known. Rod Jellicoe will be missed by many. I consider his 2007 article in Ceramics in America to be one of the most important contributions we have ever published. “Archaeologists never had the expertise to identify the specifics of which English factories made what where, and they would always just lump it together as English porcelain without really understanding the specifics of it — and that’s what Rod brought to the table. He was able to identify specific patterns and date ranges, things that previously had gone unnoticed. Nobody else had that level of expertise.”
The much loved husband of Seb/Eusebio, Rod will be dearly missed by his family and many friends.
A funeral service took place at Landican Centre Chapel, Landican Crematorium, Arrowe Park Road, Wirral, on February 29.
Donations are welcome to Cancer Research UK. Enquiries can be made to Dallingers Funeral Directors in Wallasey.
