OLD AZURIANS

 

Geoffrey Godden, born in Worthing on 2 February 1929, was a form-mate of James Feest at Worthing High School for Boys. He devoted much of his adult life to researching the history of British porcelain and became a world authority on the subject.

 

When he left school he joined the family antiques business, founded by his grandfather, which concentrated on furniture, but from an early age Geoffrey developed his own interest in antique porcelain and eventually had his own gallery at 17-18 Crescent Road, Worthing and acquired collections of British porcelain objects that were held to be amongst the best representative collections in the world.

 

By 1975 he was issuing business cards in which he self-styled himself as “The Chinaman”, no doubt as a tongue in cheek reference to the use of the term as applied to an 18th century seller of crocks, but Geoffrey was no mere dealer in antique ceramic ware, he was one of the leading scholars in ceramics. He wrote encyclopaedias and dictionaries of English ceramic ware that became standard reference books and was without question the top authority on English Victorian porcelain, writing several excellent books on the subject.

 

One writer in 1975 described him thus: “in the authority of ceramics, particularly Victorian ceramics, the grandest and most unassailable figure is Mr. Geoffrey Godden. To catch him out (in some minor error) is rather like catching out W G Grace.” Another writer in the same year praised Geoffrey’s new “Introduction to English Blue and White Porcelains” and referred to him as an outstanding representative of the new scholarship then being applied to antiques.