Known potter #17: Malcolm Cooke

This lidded jar with its well-thrown form, pale matt glaze and brushed leaf motif decoration was made by Malcolm Cooke while he was resident potter at the Cuppacumbalong Craft Centre at Tharwa in the ACT. It is stamped ‘MC AUSTRALIA’ but other works in the same style may be stamped ‘M.L. COOKE CUPPACUMBLONG [sic] POTTERY AUSTRALIA’ or just marked with an impressed ‘C’ in a square.

Cuppacumbalong is a heritage-listed homestead built in 1923 and famous for its gardens. In 1975, Karen O’Clery (then and still director of Narek Galleries) leased it from the government and established a craft centre there, with a cafe, exhibition rooms, two permanent studios (later extended to three) and a shop displaying studio outputs and other quality craft work, sourced Australia-wide. Janet Mansfield (1990), in an article celebrating its 15th year of operation, wrote “Cuppacumbalong is today one of the most successful and long-running craft outlets in the country”.

Cooke (1951- ) had trained in Victoria, obtaining a Diploma of Fine Art (Ceramics) from the Bendigo Institute of Technology in 1970, working at Bendigo Pottery and setting up potteries of his own at Clunes and Badgers Creek before coming to Cuppacumbalong in 1981 to work as a thrower for the first resident potter, Doug Alexander. When Alexander died unexpectedly in 1982, Cooke took over as resident potter and was still in charge of the pottery when O’Clery stopped leasing the homestead in 1995.

The Cuppacumbalong Craft Centre was a frequent weekend destination for us during our working years in Canberra. We took for granted the opportunities that it gave us and our interstate and overseas visitors to experience a range of high quality Australian craft in one venue. The path from the car park to the house went by the pottery studio where we could press our noses to the window and see the pale bisqued shapes inside.

A photograph in the National Archives of Australia collection shows Alexander at work in 1980, applying brushwork decoration to a port barrel. This bottle in a similar style is stamped with the Cuppacumbalong Pottery seal. A photograph in the National Library of Australia collection taken 16 years later shows Cooke at work in the same studio.

It would be interesting to compare Alexander’s and Cooke’s production designs for Cuppacumbalong, with their similar decorative motifs but different colourways. I have seen several pieces marked ‘COOKE & DUTOIT BADGERS CREEK POTTERY’ and ‘M.L. COOKE DUTOIT CLUNES’ that already exhibit the colouring and leaf motif decoration of the Cuppacumbalong years, so the cross-influences must pre-date Cooke’s move to Cuppacumbalong.

Cooke is also well-known for his distinctive one-off pieces with clean classical forms and carved decorative surfaces. In 1992, he established the Art Shed Studio and Gallery next door to Cuppacumbalong with Marily Opperman, possibly to separate his own work from the Cuppacumbalong Pottery output. We have several pieces bought from the Art Shed Studio in the 1990s. They are packed away now but a slide show is available online that displays a selection of Cooke’s carved work.

Opperman (now Cintra) had come to Cuppacumbalong from Brazil on a working visit in 1988 but stayed to join Cooke at Cuppacumbalong and then at the Art Shed Studio. Since 1999, she and Cooke have been working together on projects to place public art in health care facilities. In an interesting market venture, Cooke has also started selling tea bowls on eBay.

The Cuppacumbalong lease changed hands again in 1999 and the homestead craft centre gave way to a restaurant targeted at weddings and receptions, with a separate cottage gallery continuing to exhibit and sell modern Australian craft. Then in 2004, both businesses had to be suspended following the Canberra bushfires and closure of the Tharwa bridge. (I understand that the lessees plan to use the homestead as a private residence and to build a separate gallery and bakery cafe when the bridge re-opens.)

References

• Nola Anderson, “Malcolm Cooke and Barry Singleton, Narek Galleries, Cuppacumbalong, Tharwa, A.C.T.”, Pottery in Australia, vol.23, no.1, 1984, pp.56-57.
• “Malcolm Cooke”, Potters 1986, The Potters’ Society of Australia, 1986, p.46.
• Cuppacumbalong Craft Centre, Newsletter, Nov/Dec 1984-Nov 1989.
• “Cuppacumbalong Pottery”, Ceramics, artists, galleries, The Potters’ Society of Australia, 1990, p.31.
• Janet Mansfield, “Cuppacumbalong 15 years strong”, Ceramics: Art and Perception, No. 1, 1990, pp. 64-66.
• “Malcolm Cooke”, The Australian potters’ directory, The Potters’ Society of Australia, 1996, p.29.
• “Historic Tharwa property goes up for auction”, Canberra Times, 27 June 1999.
• http://www.cuppacumbalong.com.au, Internet Archive, 2003-2005.
  
• [Article about the current lessees' plans], Canberra Times, 21 June 2007, p.7.
• “About us. Malcom Cooke Dip Art”, Placemaking (viewed 8 June 2008).

 

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).

 

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.

 

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).

 

Known potter #13: John Dermer

Last weekend David and I made the long trip from Canberra to Yackandandah in north-eastern Victoria to attend John Dermer’s 30th annual exhibition. This porcelain salt-glazed teapot was amongst the 40 pieces on exhibition (one for each year that he has been potting). It is one of only a few teapots that he has ever successfully salt-glazed “because they usually fail!”.

Dermer was born in Melbourne in 1949. He completed formal studies at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology in 1970 and set up his first kiln in his parent’s backyard. In 1971 he traveled to Europe and North America, working for a time at Josiah Wedgwood & Sons in England. On his return to Australia in 1973 he completed a Diploma of Education and established a kiln at Eltham. Then in 1975 he set up Kirby’s Flat Pottery in Yackandandah and has lived and worked there ever since.

Last year Dermer was awarded the Salzbrand Keramik 2006 prize for his salt-glazed ceramics. He sees this as “the culmination of a 40 year love/hate relationship with the process of salt-glazing” (2007, page 101). Salt-glazing is a form of decoration where salt is added to a kiln at the end of a firing. It volatilises and fluxes with the silicas in the unglazed clay surface, creating a glassy translucent effect with a slightly ‘orange-peel’ texture. The process is very unforgiving but it is also addictive because it can produce rewarding and unexpected results. With this award Dermer has become an internationally-recognised master of the process.

This year one of the targets we set ourselves was to get better acquainted with Dermer’s work and to add some of his pieces to our collection. We bought this simple thrown form with flattened sides on our first visit to the pottery in March. It shows the degree of control that Dermer has been able to achieve over the salt-glazing process, using inscribed line and pattern on a smooth flashed surface to evoke aspects of the Australian landscape. The teapot is quite different in style. The orange-peel effect has been accentuated using iron and cobalt oxides to create an intricate pattern over the white porcelain surface that envelops and articulates the teapot form.

Dermer also decorates pieces using the terra sigillata process, a way of creating a silky smooth finish by applying a coating of microfine clay to a once-fired pot. He first used this technique to make a series of large vessels for New Parliament House in Canberra in 1988. He wraps the pots in a ceramic blanket encasing salt, oxides and casuarina branches for the second firing. The branch atomises, leaving a shadowy imprint.

In 1995 Dermer was commissioned to make six platters for sale during the 1996 Turner exhibition at the National Gallery of Australia. Turner’s paintings of the Houses of Parliament burning and of loading coals at night inspired him to experiment with the oil-spot and tomato red glazes that are combined in this large (32 cm high) spherical vase. The oil spot collar and rust colour lend it a sombreness which then surprises with flashes of red. This piece was made in 1997, just before Dermer stopped selling his work from outlets other than his own studio. We bought it at Berrima Galleries in 2006. I’m not sure where it had been in the meantime.

Dermer’s exhibition pieces have three and four figure prices that reflect the trials involved in making them and the quality of the result. He also makes a production range that is more affordable for non-collectors. He marks his exhibition pieces with his initials using an impressed stamp or signs them with his inscribed name. Production pieces like this platter are stamped with the Kirby’s Flat Pottery mark. (A number of these are now turning up on eBay.)

As well as making pots, Dermer is a keen photographer. The desert and escarpment regions of central and northern Australia are sources of inspiration for both his ceramic and photographic work.

Sources

A full CV is available from Dermer’s website.

• John Dermer, “40 years on”, Ceramics: art and perception, no.69, 2007: 101-103.
• John Dermer, “A lifetime of salt-glazing”, Ceramics: art and perception, no.57, 2004: 89-92.
• Mary Lou Jelbart, “John Dermer: aligned to the land”, Ceramics: art and perception, no.20, 1995: 72-74.
• John Dermer, Burnt earth, the journey, Yackandandah, Vic. : J. Dermer, [1992].
• April Hersey, “John Dermer “, Craft Australia, no.3, Spring 1980: 24-25.

 

Known potter #12: Milton Moon

This medium-sized (23 cm in diameter) stoneware bowl with pale matt glaze and delicate brushwork decoration is inscribed on the base ‘Milton Moon’.

Milton Moon is possibly the most recognised name in Australian contemporary pottery and his works attract a great deal of attention at auction and on eBay. Prices achieved range from $100-$800 depending on size and condition, with a large bowl fetching a hammer price of $1,700 at the Shapiro auction we attended earlier this year.

Moon was born in 1926 in Melbourne. Like most young men of his generation, his life was interrupted by war. Settling in Brisbane in 1949, he worked in radio and television and trained for a while as a painter while also pursuing an early interest in pottery through his friendship with Harry Memmott. In 1959 he set up a studio at Tarragindi, Brisbane. He was mostly self-taught but learnt wheel-throwing from Mervyn Feeney, a discipline that he passed on to his students at the Department of Technical Education in Queensland (1962-1969) and the School of Art in Adelaide (1969-1975).

Our bowl was made in the late 1970s or early 1980s after he had retired from teaching and was potting full-time at Summertown in the Adelaide Hills. Descriptions of work done at this time (”Milton Moon”, 1981) indicate that the glaze is nepheline syenite, the brushwork is done with oxides and it was reduction-fired in a gas kiln. Its restraint and simplicity, the slight alteration of the wheel-thrown form and the delicacy of the decoration reflect the Japanese Zen aesthetic which pervades this stream of Moon’s work. In the 12 months since we bought this piece it has given us daily pleasure.

Not all of his pieces are like this. Much of his work is stronger, bolder, more exuberant and perhaps less immediately approachable. Moon has been experimenting throughout his life as a potter with ways of achieving an Australian aesthetic in his pottery, influenced by the sense of an ancient spirit that he found first in the east coast rainforests, then in the bare bones and aridness of the South Australian outback. Some of these pots may need to be lived with for a long time to understand what the potter was striving to express.

We don’t yet own one of these tougher works. Moon has been a prolific exhibitor but he has only had two solo exhibitions in Canberra, both at Solander Gallery in 1976 and 1988, and we missed these. Now we keep our eye out for Milton Moon pieces but the competition is strong and the prices high. Also, there are so many directions in which we might invest our limited collecting budget. We went to the Shapiro auction to buy our first Gwyn Hanssen Pigott and had to watch four Milton Moons go to other bidders.

Moon’s exhibition works are all marked with the potter’s full signature but he also made many pots for sale from his gallery at Summertown. This small stoneware dish with hand-painted pansies is an example. He signed these pieces with a simple incised ‘M’ characterised by a long first stem.

There are other potters with these initials and it is definitely a case of ‘buyer beware’ in the market place. Sellers finding a piece inscribed ‘M’ or’MM’ and referring to Geoff Ford’s Encyclopedia of Australian potters’ marks (page 167) may jump too readily to the conclusion that it was made by Milton Moon, in the hope of making a good sale. This is sad for both the collector and the potter.

Sources

A good way of getting an overall feeling for Milton Moon and his work is to spend an hour browsing through the images and accompanying notes on the potter’s website. The CV on the website is also very complete. Listed below in date order are some of the other sources I found useful when preparing this entry:

• Focus on Milton Moon / Dennis Pryor. [St. Lucia, Qld.] : University of Queensland Press, 1967.
• “Milton Moon” in Australian pottery / [by] Kenneth Hood and Wanda Garnsey ; Photographs by Douglas Thompson. South Melbourne, Vic. : Macmillan, 1972, pages 104-111, plates 78-84.
• “Milton Moon” in The Potter’s art : an Australian collection / edited by Janet Mansfield ; photographs by Douglas Thompson. North Ryde, N.S.W. : Cassell Australia, 1981, page 40.
• “Milton Moon: A strengthening of tradition” in Ceramics in South Australia, 1836-1986 : from folk to studio pottery / by Noris Ioannou. Adelaide : Wakefield Press, 1986, pages 333-335.
• Noris Ioannou, “Milton Moon’s Australian aesthetic”, Ceramics: art and perception, issue 2, 1990, pages 48-51.
• Milton Moon retrospective / Christopher Menz. Adelaide : Art Gallery Board of South Australia, 1991.
• “A conversation with Milton Moon on approaching the intangible” [Interview by Osborne, Margot.] Artlink, volume 26, number.4, 2006: pages (62)-65.
• The Zen Master, the potter & the poet / by Milton Moon. Stepney, S. Aust. : Axion Publishing, c2006.

 

Known potter #11: Pippin Drysdale

This small (14 x 15 cm) perfectly thrown bowl with parabolic form has an intense orange interior bound into a radial cellular pattern by fine dark lines and lustre accents. The pattern continues on the outside as an undulating band below which flow striated lines of muted colour. The small unfooted base is marked Pippin Drysdale ‘95.

Pippin Drysdale is an internationally renowned potter based in Fremantle, Western Australia. She was born in Melbourne in 1943 but spent her childhood in Perth and returned there to live in 1972. She came late to potting, graduating from the Perth Technical College in 1982 and then obtaining a Bachelor of Arts from the Western Australian Institute of Technology (WAIT) in 1986.

At WAIT (now Curtin University of Technology) she became interested in design and experimented with painting onto clay slabs. Later she returned to the bowl shape as the form through which she could best explore the use of resist techniques and coloured lines and planes to evoke a sense of landscape. By 1995 she was working as a mature artist and achieving strong critical acclaim. She had exhibited at Narek Gallery here in the ACT in 1989 and 1992 but we had missed these exhibitions and were not particularly aware of her work.

I come from Perth and go back often to see my family. In 1995 David was with me and my sister and I took him to Fremantle for fish and chips at Cicerellos, a visit to the Fremantle Arts Centre in the old female asylum building and a walking tour of the back streets of the city. There we stumbled quite by accident on The Door Gallery and Drysdale’s solo exhibition of seventy works from her new Pinnacle series. We were enthralled and ran from room to room, knowing that just one of these pots was to go home with us and trying to choose which one.

When we go together to an exhibition somehow we always end up finding one piece that we both agree is the nicest. Price was a factor so we scorned the larger pieces, finding them showy. Amongst the more modest pieces that had not already been sold, this one stood out for us because of the intense colour inside the bowl, how this is constrained by the network of lines and the expressionist outside surface.

Back in Perth this August for family reasons we found that we had just missed an exhibition of Drysdale’s work at the John Curtin Gallery . The exhibition coincided with the launch of a new book on the artist (Ted Snell, Pippin Drysdale, Lines of Site, Fremantle Arts Centre Press, 2007). We were able to buy a copy of this book and found it enriching to know more about our piece and how it had been made.

Drysdale has her own website and continues to explore and refine new ideas in her Tanami Traces series with the help of collaborator Warwick Palmeteer who throws pots to her design.

 

Known potter #10: Derek Smith

This 15 cm high vessel with front opening has been made by combining two half circles. It may have been intended for use as a salt pig. If so, it is certainly the nicest salt pig I have ever seen. The unglazed white stoneware clay has been incised in horizontal rings on the outside and stained with oxides. The precision of the spherical form makes it recognisable as the work of Derek Smith. The Blackfriars Pottery ‘BP’ impressed seal on the top dates it to the period 1977-1983 as does the stamp on the side.

Smith trained as a ceramic designer and art teacher in England and worked in pottery studios and the ceramic industry before coming to Australia in 1956. Over the next sixteen years he taught at art schools in Hobart and Sydney as well as setting up his own kilns and studios at Bowral, NSW (1958-1962), Hobart (1962-1964) and Beecroft, NSW (1965-1972). Then in 1973 he was invited to establish and manage a pottery studio within the Doulton Australia factory at Chatswood, NSW.

This small jug stamped ‘Doulton Studio Australia’ is quite different from other outputs of the factory such as the jug on the right from the Grecian key range. In an article in Pottery in Australia (Vol. 13, No. 2, Spring 1974, pp. 4-9) Smith describes how this new venture came about, defends his use of the jolley machine and moulds to increase efficiency and speaks about his ideas for future development of the studio.

Peter Rushforth, reviewing an exhibition of the studio’s work in 1975, saw Smith’s training as a designer equipping him to take on this challenge (Pottery in Australia, Vol. 14, No. 2, Spring 1975, p. 61). Potters with a more romantic approach to throwing as part of the creative process might have found it harder to establish a studio in an industrial plant.

For whatever reason, Smith did not stay long at Doulton. He left in 1976 to set up the Blackfriars Pottery in Chippendale, an inner Sydney suburb. The Powerhouse Museum, which purchased four discoid forms in 1976 observed that Blackfriars had became the largest of its kind in Australia. From this I am assuming that he took some of his production methods with him to the new pottery. Certainly many of the works now coming up for auction by Derek Smith are from this period.

In 1984 he moved back to Tasmania and set up a studio at ‘Oakwood’ Mangalore. Here he kept a lower profile, emerging from time to time with a new collection of pieces for exhibition. We bought this spherical box from a gallery in Battery Point, Hobart, in the early 1990s. It has the impressed DS mark used for work from this period.

In 2001, Despard Gallery took a selection of his work to the SOFA exposition in Chicago. Subsequently, Smith spent four years living and working in Italy. He was back in Tasmania by 2006 when he held an exhibition at the Handmark Gallery in Hobart. Both of these exhibitions showcased his increasing use of rich burnished colours and metallic glazes.

By contrast, this small semi-cylindrical wall piece with iron-grey textured decoration which we bought from the Handmark Gallery earlier this year shows a return to a muted palette and textured surface.

A definitive book has yet to be published on Smith. Hood and Garnsey (Australian Pottery, pp. 152-153 and plates 114-120) assess his work up until 1972, finding his textured surfaces “a necessary foil to the severity of his forms”. Nine Artist Potters, (Littlemore and Carlstrom, 1973, pp. 90-105) includes an interesting potter’s statement. Janet Mansfield (A Collector’s Guide to Modern Australian Ceramics, 1988, pp. 21-23) classes his work with that of Gwyn Hanssen Pigott, Les Blakebrough, Victor Greenaway, Mansfield herself, Greg Daly, Joan Campbell and Owen Rye as genuine examples of the potter’s art.

His work is fairly easy to identify from the style and/or marks. Geoff Ford (Encyclopedia of Australian Potters’ Marks, pp. 203-204) lists the eleven marks that Smith has used over the years. These mostly consist of his name or initials in various forms. The ones to watch out for are a T in a circle from his early years in Tasmania and this one, which he used at Beecroft, usually but not always with a ‘Derek Smith Studio’ seal.

Postscript

Christine Ball has let me know that the cb mark is hers. Ball studied at the East Sydney Technical College from 1972-1973 and worked for Derek Smith in his Beecroft Studio in 1974. She recalls that Smith encouraged her to make some one-off pieces using her mark  with the Beecroft seal. Ball set up her own pottery in Sydney in 1975 through a workshop grant from the Australia Council then moved to Uralla, NSW, where she is still working as a potter.

 

Known potter #9: Kevin Boyd

This pair of earthenware lidded containers with slip-trailed decoration was made by the Victorian potter Kevin Boyd. In June 1989 he exhibited a series of “faintly Islamic” whimsical ‘blush’ pots that sound very similar although not illustrated in the exhibition review (Helen Young, “Precious little - Victorian Ceramic Group”, Pottery in Australia, 28(4), Dec 1989, p.64).

Boyd’s entry in Potters Online tells us that he is currently based in Surrey Hills, Melbourne. He graduated from the Bendigo College of Advanced Education with a Diploma of Art (Ceramics) in 1977 (Missing Alumni: Bendigo Campus 1977-1979) and has been teaching and making pottery for thirty-two years.

In recent years he has been exploring Raku Nu. This is a technique that uses slip as a separating layer between the burnished bisque-fired pot and the raku glaze. The glaze cracks on firing and the cracks are coloured by smoke in a reduction chamber. The slip is then scraped away, leaving a naked black and white surface. He exhibited a number of large pieces in this style at the pottery expo at Gapstead in 2006.

Boyd inscribes his work ‘Kevin Boyd’ and also uses an impressed stamp with his full name and a five petal flower motif on functional ware. Novice eBay sellers sometimes mistake him for a member of the famous Boyd family but I am not aware of any connection.

 

Known potter #8: Shannon Garson

This porcelain tea bowl with finely painted and textured surfaces and attenuated rim was made by the Queensland potter Shannon Garson. Her mark is a painted heart with wings. She trained as a painter and takes a painterly approach to her thrown vessels using simple forms that are meant to be used. A few weeks ago, Garson mentioned my blog in her blog, Strange Fragments. By coincidence I had already been thinking about making her the subject of an entry.

We first noticed Garson’s work at Beaver Galleries several years ago. Our first purchase was a tiny buttery-yellow bowl, then we added the tea bowl to our collection and lastly this salad bowl dated 2004 with raised anemones on a copper green background. A lot of potters work in porcelain now because of its whiteness, smoothness and translucency. Garson’s work stood out for us because of the nuanced surfaces, botanical references and delicacy of colour and line. (For more on her method of working see her website.) Garson’s pieces are also affordable at a time when some potters are pricing their work for an elite market.