Mystery potter #17: EL (?)

This jug with its three matching goblets is inscribed on the base with the initials ‘EL’ (?). We bought it as a set on eBay last month. The seller, who comes from Brisbane, thinks that it was made in Queensland. None of the three ‘EL’ potters in my database (Emily Laszuk, Elva Linnemann and Elizabeth Lyon) seem likely candidates. Laszuk (formerly Emily Stackman) and Lyon are well-established potters based in NSW and WA respectively. Linnemann, who won the Walker Ceramic Award cash prize in 1986, trained at the Tasmanian School of Art.

Hundreds of such sets are listed on eBay each year and many more must still reside in kitchen cupboards or dressers. We bought this one (which may once have had six goblets) because of its distinctive style. It is made out of white clay and glazed a dusky speckled pink that looks like porphyry. The ivory glaze on the inside of the goblets cuffs the rim with a visually pleasing irregular line. The jug, which is shaped like a ewer, is half-glazed in the same ivory colour and has a carved band of decoration where the two colours join.

Goblets formed part of the repertoire of almost every potter with a production line in the 1970s and 1980s. In their simplest form they are easy to make (without problematic handles) and must have sold well too. Whether customers actually used them is another question, but I can attest that a well-made goblet can lead to a good drinking experience. While our furniture was on its way to Bemboka, David and I spent the night in the house we are renting with a bottle of red wine and a set of Malcom Cooke Cuppacumbalong goblets that we had just found at the Canberra tip shop. Like the ‘EL’ goblets, they were comfortable to hold and made an interesting change from glass.

 

Known potter #16: Christopher Sanders

This lidded crock signed and dated “Chris Sanders, 1973” is one of about 30 pots that have came with us to our rented house in Bemboka. The rest of our collection has gone into storage until our new house and gallery is built. David asked for this one, which we bought in 2006, not to be packed away. He likes the rhythm of the form with its narrow base and short, splayed handles, the way the clay has been worked and scored, the mottled, brown-green glaze and the domed, closely fitting lid.

Christopher Sanders was born in Melbourne in 1952, the son of the potter Tom Sanders. In 1973 he was working in his father’s pottery at Eltham, making pots with earthenware clay and commercial glazes fired in an electric kiln, but yearning to experiment with stoneware and reduction firing, which needs the flame of gas or wood. Our crock seems to reflect this, striving towards a stoneware aesthetic while also reflecting a 1960s modernist style akin to the work of David and Hermia Boyd.

In 1974 Sanders set up his own workshop and bought his first gas kiln, then in 1976 he took up a two-year traineeship with Ian Sprague at Mungeribar Pottery. By the late 1970s he was working mainly in porcellanous stoneware but sometimes, like his father, made earthenware pieces for decoration by other artists. This large lidded sphere with its sepia brown drawing of a crab is one of about fifty pieces that he made in collaboration with Donald Green.

On a study trip to the United States, Great Britain and Europe in 1979, he was inspired by the celadon-glazed ware he saw in museums to learn more about reduction glaze techniques and firing processes. He established a studio at Clifton Hill (where he still lives) and later formalised his studies through a Masters Degree by Research (Ceramics) from the School of Art, RMIT, completed in 1999.

We became familiar with his work in the late 1980s and 1990s, investing in several large lidded jars (all packed away now) with oriental shapes and richly surfaced copper red and chun glazes. This shallow bowl with intense purple-red glaze that came down with our garden pots had a disastrous engagement with a vacuum cleaner but still exhibits the richly coloured and glowing surfaces that characterise his style.

Today Sanders is regarded as one of Australia’s master potters. He also teaches, coordinating RMIT University’s ceramics courses, and writes, publishing articles about ceramic techniques and reviewing the work of other potters. In his recent work he has been experimenting with new composite forms and the sculptural effects of exhibiting pieces in trios.

His early works are inscribed Chris Sanders, C. Sanders or C.S., often with a date. Later he began to use the initials CS in the form of an impressed seal.

References:

• Barbara Blaxland, “Chris Sanders, Cook’s Hill Galleries, June 1983.” Pottery in Australia, vol. 22, no. 2 (1983), p.65.
• Carl Andrews, “Harmonics of form and glaze,” Craft Arts International, no. 18 (1990), pp. 47-52.
• Fiona Hiscock, “Christopher Sanders,” Pottery in Australia, vol. 37, no. 1 (1998), pp. 40-42.
• Chris Sanders, “Celadon glaze: a personal journey,” Pottery in Australia. vol. 40, no. 4 (2001), pp. 38-40.
• “Chris Sanders,” Australian ceramics directory (viewed 1 April 2008).

 

Australian pottery at Bemboka

You may have been wondering what David and I do with all the pottery we own. The answer is that we live with pieces all around us. However, the pottery we have been buying second-hand in recent years mainly goes into storage after a short time on display. We have been stockpiling it as part of a master plan to retire to the country and set up a gallery devoted to Australian Pottery, 1960s to date.

Next week we embark on the next stage of our lives by moving to Bemboka, the ‘village in a valley’ at the foot of Brown Mountain on the way to the NSW south coast. This is a picture of our virgin block after the cows had stopped grazing on it. The builders have now started work and we hope to open the gallery in early 2009. Meantime we are renting a house nearby.

When we tell people our plans most ask if we are potters ourselves. The answer is no. We love pottery and marvel at how it was produced. We admire the strength and industry of potters and the level of technical knowledge and skill needed to bring their ideas to fruition. But neither of us has ever felt ‘the call to clay’.

 

Mystery potter #15: M in octagon

We bought this large (45 cm diameter) platter from a Melbourne auction house in 2005. It is decorated in muted tones in a triangular pattern using a glaze-over-glaze technique. The mark is an impressed M in an octagon. I don’t know anything else about the potter.

It must be challenging to throw a platter this large. It creates a relatively flat surface for decoration that brings out the painter in the potter. In this case, the ragged painterly edges of the triangular motifs and the transition from light to dark creates an interesting sense of movement within the bounds of the circular form.

 

Art or craft

This series of nine soda-glazed porcelain oil cans by Maryke Henderson was exhibited at the Canberra Potters’ Society annual exhibition under the title Family in 2006, where it won the Doug Alexander award for that year.

Henderson is a Canberra potter who graduated as a mature-age student from the Canberra School of Art in 2005 and was one of four 2005 ANU graduates to participate in the Emerging Artist Support Scheme (EASS 06). She was also one of the Canberra artists represented in Impact, an exhibition from Canberra and the region held in Brisbane from 8th to 18th July 2006 in association with Verge, the 11th National Ceramic Conference.

David and I both knew that we wanted to own Family as soon as we saw that it had not been sold and that the price was within our reach. We liked the quirky oil can forms and the way the soda-glazing technique had been used to clothe the porcelain bodies in soft and subtle patterns and tones. We also liked the way the taller oil cans seemed to herd their smaller brethren.

In group exhibitions works by the same artist are often arranged together for display. This accidental association creates a whole greater than its parts. The shared features of each piece contribute to a group ethos and it can be hard to select just one that encapsulates the quality of the whole. In this case Henderson saw characteristics of her own family in the grouping and made it an expression of a single work, thus releasing us from the burden of choice.

Recently $45,000 was achieved at a Deutscher and Hackett auction for a Gwyn Hanssen Pigott work entitled Shadow, a grouping of twelve crafted objects. Chris Sanders, reviewing a 2004 exhibition of similar groupings by Hanssen Pigott in Craft Culture, observes that together they create a “musical-like rhythm and harmony”. The origin of each piece as a crafted object is transcended, creating a tension between craft and art that gives the group the status of a fine art object.

I am not sure whether Henderson would have created Family without the precedent set by Hanssen Pigott or whether we would have responded so readily to it as a work but we are very pleased with it. The pieces are arrayed on a tall cupboard in our living room, somewhat crowded in their domestic setting but still together.

It will be interesting to see what becomes of it in future years and where it ends up when the time comes to put it up for re-sale. Will it be dismantled and sold as separate objects or will its integrity as a group be recognised and conserved? I guess that will depend on the market and on Henderson’s perceived status as a ceramic artist at that time.

 

More on sources

Last week I spent some time browsing through the new Dictionary of Australian Artists Online (DAAO). This contains almost 7,000 biographies of Australian artists. The foundation data is drawn from existing print sources but work is already under way to add new entries. Sixteen indigenous potters are represented, reflecting the research interests of the editor-in-chief, Vivien Johnson. Apart from these, Angela Valamanesh and Peter Travis are the only contemporary potters who yet have entries. Valamanesh is there mainly because of her installation work and Travis because of his work as a designer.

DAAO is still a very young service with a forward-thinking publication model. Anyone can register as a contributor and start creating entries or adding parallel entries to flesh out the historical record. I’ve been thinking about how the daunting task of building up a body of entries for Australian potters might be achieved. Unless this is done, their representation in a resource aiming to “reflect the entire landscape and history of artistic production in Australia” may lean towards potters who ‘cross over’ through sculptural or installation work or go on to work in other media.

 

Known potter #15: Victor Greenaway

This large spherical porcelain jar with lid was made by the master potter Victor Greenaway. It is 22 cm high and has a dry glaze with a fine downy texture. A similar jar in the collection of the National Gallery of Australia illustrated in Victor Greenaway: Ceramics 1965-2005 (The Beagle Press, 2005, page 39) is dated 1977. Ours may be earlier as the oval seal with impressed goblet was used from 1973-1975. (We can’t claim to be early Greenaway collectors and bought this piece in 2005.)

Greenaway was born in 1947 in Sale, Victoria. He became interested in pottery as a teenager, completed a Diploma of Fine Art at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and worked at Ian Sprague’s Mungeribar Pottery in Upper Beaconsfield from 1969-1973.

His marks are well recorded in both Ford’s Encyclopedia and the 2005 book mentioned above.  Oddly, the G in a circle on our jar is not mentioned. Early work like this pair of goblets is stamped with a ‘G’ in a square and may also have the Mungeribar Pottery seal.

In 1973 Greenaway built his own Broomhill pottery on six acres next door to the Mungeribar Pottery. In 1975 he established a production studio there with a training programme funded by the Australia Council. Apprentices working at the studio over the next 12 years included Bruce Heggie, Edith-Ann Murray, Barry Hayes and Warren Arthur, who wrote about his six years at the pottery in Pottery in Australia (”Forming the foundation”, 24/4:1985, 24-25).

From the number of works listed on eBay with the Broomhill stamp (an impressed goblet in a rectangle), production must have equaled that of Derek Smith’s Blackfriars Pottery, operating around the same time in Sydney.

Greenaway controlled the design and quality of the product and kept the studio operating as ‘a well-oiled machine’ (Arthur, page 24). Over this time he distinguished his own work with a personal seal consisting of a G with the Broomhill Studio goblet.

In February 1983 the Ash Wednesday bushfires destroyed the family home at Upper Beaconsfield. He rebuilt but eventually sold the property in 1993 and closed down the studio. In 1995 he bought a property at Nungurner on the Gippsland lakes and has lived and worked there as a solo potter (and also as a painter) for the last 12 years.

His work since 1993 is marked with a VG personal seal. This example is from a small tenmoku bowl in our collection. Recently exhibited pieces are quite wonderful, consisting of open spiral forms made of Limoges porcelain with intensely coloured glazes. He also produces similar forms using the ancient Etruscan black-fired technique of bucchero.

He has had an association with Italy since 1999 through the potter Marino Moretti and his website says that he is currently spending two years in Orvieto.

 

Mystery potter #15: PPP with map of Australia

This white stoneware mug with pale celadon glaze and waratah decoration is marked with the impressed stamp PPP next to a map of Australia. In style it alludes to a long tradition of functional stoneware with Australian floral motifs but the wedged shape, the extreme paleness of the glaze and the pink stamens in low relief lend it a post-modern feel. There is a deftness to this piece that makes me surprised that I can’t identify the mark. It was one of four bought on eBay in 2005 from a Sydney seller and that is all I know about the provenance.

The initials PPP will resonate with Australian collectors because they stand for Premier Pottery Preston and were used in the form of a black underglaze stamp from 1929-1933 on Remued pieces. The two contemporary potteries that I can find with these initials - Poole’s Pony Pottery and Pumpkin Patch Pottery - seem unlikely candidates.

Peter Pilven, who lectures in ceramics at the University of Ballarat, signs his works Pilven or Peter Pilven. Pat Pearson, a potter active on the north coast of NSW in the 1980s, signed her work with a P in a triangle or her full name. Peter Petruccelli, who worked as a potter from 1968 to 1997, signed his ceramic pieces Petruccelli or stamped them Petruccelli Ceramics UBeaconsfield (for Upper Beaconsfield, Victoria). I don’t have marks recorded for Peter Pine, an Armidale NSW potter with an entry in the 1981 directory, or for Pat Pennington, a Leura NSW potter with an entry in the 1990 directory.

This puts paid to potters with the initials PP. I give up when it comes to places. At least I know that it is an Australian mark!

 

Known potter #14: Penne Jefford

Canberra is an inland city and in summer its residents escape to the coast, a 145 kilometre drive across the tableland through Bungendore and Braidwood, then down Clyde Mountain to Bateman’s Bay. Over the years we have often made the trek to join family and friends there. In the early 1990s, while taking a break at Braidwood, we found an exhibition of Penne Jefford’s work at Studio Altenberg.

Jefford is a Queensland artist who began potting in 1978 and opened her own gallery on Mount Tamborine in 1986. In 1989 she returned to potting full-time, setting out to create a new body of work inspired by ancient civilisations.

The pieces we saw at Braidwood were stoneware vessels that had been assembled from thrown and carved forms and decorated using lustre and gold leaf. We were amazed to see works of such sophistication and originality in a regional gallery. We continued our journey with one of the smaller and more affordable examples. Some way down the road, we turned the car around, went back and exchanged it for the one illustrated here.

Our piece is 42 cm high and rises like a reliquary from a two-ringed gilded base. The strongly rounded body has been airbrushed a midnight blue dusted with stars and decorated with abstract ritualistic designs. The neck with its carved extrusions is similar to a more elaborate work entitled ‘Shogun’ illustrated in Douglas Cameron’s article on Jefford (”Of myths and rituals”, Craft Arts International, no. 25, 1992, pages 68-70). Our piece is slightly earlier (the base is inscribed ‘PJ 90′) and the cultural references less explicit.

We’ve always been surprised not to encounter Jefford’s work again but she started painting soon after completing this body of work and now focuses her artistic energy and interest in past cultures almost entirely on two-dimensional media (Redcliffe Bayside Herald, 5 January 2005).

 

Mystery potter #14: Kirkpatrick

This small (13 cm high) bottle has been hand built using folds of clay. The roughly textured and stained body looks like weathered rock and the shape is irregular and flattened on one side. The perfectly turned and glazed tenmoku neck thus comes as a surprise. Inscribed on the base is the name ‘Kirkpatrick’.

I like this pot so much that I’ve used it in the header to my blog. It reminds me of turned pieces of wood that I’ve seen with the body left unworked to expose the naturally occurring form. Only in this case, the clay took this shape after it had been formed by the potter and it became rock after it had been fired.

I’d be interested to see more work by this potter, whose name I haven’t been able to find in any of the published sources.