Someone on eBay has listed what looks like the same vase as my pink one, except they have a pair and a bowl + figurine... would they have been sold as a set does anyone know, or is it that someone has collected them as such?
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3770645916
Thanks for any thoughts.
Ah, Anne, you have hit upon the age-old chestnut - When is a garniture not a garniture?
On the British market I have seen sufficient of the 2565? flared and unplinthed version of the "log lady" floating bowl set garnished with a pair of matching 2437s to be confident that they were retailed together. The question then is does this make them a garniture set. I think it does, as it is an accepted combination found regularly. However, a purist might argue that it has to appear in company literature or be obviously a garniture (like many Art Deco marble clock garnitures) before that epithet can be formally applied.
You then get stages in between, such as:
Exhibited as a garniture and informally sold as such,
A successful marketing approach by one or more of Sowerby's sales reps,
A successful sales technique by one or more major retailers.
I notice that auction houses such as Sotheby's get around the problem by just describing the set as X accompanied by a matching pair of Y.
Note
1. Glen kindly confirmed on this board some time ago that the two versions of the bowl are from different moulds, hence my query on the pattern number, which may only apply to the upright sided plinthed version.
2. Beware of overextrapolating from scarce material. For example, Bagley's PG advertisement of 1st February 1936 shows a 1333 clock flanked by a pair of 3013 vases. Some might interpret this as a garniture combination. However I have never seen this set for sale, and I believe that the display shown in the photograph was just an attractive layout by the advertisement designer, nothing more than that. More recently the 1993 Shipley exhibition souvenir showed Davidson sets on Bagley and Sowerby plinths. That demonstrates nothing other than a shameful error by museum professionals, who should have noticed and corrected it before publication!
Bernard C. 8)