Mystery potter #31: ‘CL’ or ‘CC’

This finely ribbed 16 cm high stoneware vase has been wheel-thrown and then altered, with flattened sides and rolled-over neck. The body has been glazed black on the inside and exposed lip and a yellow-brown with oxide inclusions on the outside, then decorated with a paler yellow slip on one side. The mark on the base is an incised ‘CL’ or perhaps ‘CC’ with a flourished dot.

Col Levy uses an incised ‘CL’ as a mark on some pieces, but his C is a cypher crossing the top of the L. This, and the impressed version of his mark, are both illustrated in Geoff Ford’s Encyclopaedia of Australian Potters’ Marks.

We thought for some time that the mark on this vase was another version of Col Levy’s incised mark, but Levy himself says not.  This raises the interesting question of who the maker really is. I’ve gone through the other potters in my database with the initials ‘CL’  and ‘CC’ without finding any obvious candidates.

 

Mystery potter #30: Marjo (?)

Visitors to the gallery are fascinated by lidded pots and can’t resist looking inside. David and I pretend not to notice the chink of lids as they move around the displays. We know the pleasure of seeing how well the lid fits, and discovering the finish of interior surfaces.

This lidded bowl is meant to be used as a sugar bowl, but it has all the beauty of a lidded box.  The base is a footed hemisphere with a wide slightly altered rim, in which the domed lid is set. The glaze is a dark celadon over an iron oxide base, with delicate wax resist floral decoration. A narrow pale stoneware shelf is exposed when the lid is removed, its colour echoed in the unglazed foot ring.

The blue lines tracing  transitions in the form and linking decorative elements allude to blue and white china, the muted colours to Victorian furnishings. The style is so distinctive that I feel saddened not to know the maker.  There is a mark inscribed on the base under the glaze, and I can just make out the name ‘Marjo’ or similar. I am half-inclined to think that this is the ACT potter Marjo Jones, although her mark in the 1986 directory is given as  ‘MJ’.

 

Mystery potter #29: Val Charles?

This handbuilt earthenware  vessel with triangular profile is actually a ten-sided prism. It is 27 cm high (34 with the  flat four-sided stopper, which echoes the irregular shape and angles in reverse).  The form is that of a decanter but I am calling it a vessel as it would not lend itself easily to functional use.

The stained and brushwork decoration, in shades of pale brown, orange and turquoise travels up the body and has an organic feel – we thought snakeskin at first, but this morning the colours suggest mangroves in a river flood plain to me.  This may be right, as the seller said that it had been bought from a gallery in Buderim, Queensland, in 1987.

The incised mark on the base is a V inside an open circle – ‘CV’ or ‘VC’. When researching the mark, I thought that I had an immediate hit with Cheryl Vidulich, a Queensland potter who features in the Pottery in Australia special Queensland edition (February 1986, volume 25, no. 1, p. 69). In 1986, she was based at Lushan Pottery, Proserpine in North Queensland. However, at that time, she was interested in chattering on thrown vessels, and in exploring shino glazes. I haven’t found any evidence yet that she was also making handbuilt pieces in the style of this vessel.

A number of potters have the initials ‘VC’ but I could not find any with a Queeensland connection.

Postscript

Johanna DeMaine suggests that this may be the work of the Sunshine Coast potter Val Charles.

 

Mystery potter #28: ‘Julie’

This 16 cm high stoneware vase or large beaker is glazed celadon on the inside, with a white slip wash, and left unglazed on the outside except for a thin band around the rim. While it looks like a goblet, the pedestal base is hollow. The upper half is decorated with a wide band of sharply carved low relief griffins and other mythological animals, coloured with a blue-grey slip and stained with oxide.  The base is signed ‘Julie 77′ and there are also two seals impressed on the side, one a trefoil, the other a triangle inside a triangle.

With so many maker’s marks, it is quite poignant that this pot has become separated from its maker. Juliet Bailey, a potter active in Bairnsdale, Victoria, in the 1980s, signed her work ‘Julie’, but her hand (as evidenced in the 1985 and 1986 potters’ directories) is different. I also have two other mystery potters signing their work ‘Julie’, each in different hands again. It turns out that Julie is a popular name for a potter.

Julie Clay, Julie Shaw and Julie Shepherd sign their work with their full names, from the examples I’ve seen. Julie Fraser uses an F in an egg-shaped form in the 1981 and 1985 directories.

Here are the  Julies in my database without a mark yet recorded: Julie Bartholomew (a NSW potter who began exhibiting in the early 1990s), Julie Bloom (a student at Caulfield Institute of Technology in 1981), Julie Emerson (a Queensland potter active in the 1980s), Julie Hants ( a student at Bendigo College of Advanced Education in 1990), Julie Kerner (a NSW potter with an entry in the 1974 directory and several mentions in early issues of Pottery in Australia), Julie Martin (a student at Sydney College of the Arts in 1984), Julie Paterson (in stock at Collect in Sydney in 2006), and Julie Stoneman (a member of the Laburnum Gallery, Blackburn, Victoria, cooperative in the 1980s).

Of these,  Julie Kerner looks like a possible contender. There is a picture on the cover of Pottery in Australia, 8/2 (1969) of an unglazed stoneware architectural form made by Julie Kerner and Brig Taylor. One might see a stylistic connection. But David rightly says that one might also not.

 

Mystery potter #27: IC (?), or TD (?)

This curious 20 cm high stoneware bottle has a pouring lip shaped like a tricorn hat. Underneath, two holes and a vertical protusion form a rudimentary face. The many-ridged collar, and the moulded and pierced decoration at the front, give the impression of a uniform or formal dress in 17th or 18th century style.

I find it very endearing, possibly because it is a fully functional form that has been anthropomorphised through delicate touches, rather than a head vase, half human, half functional. The austere expression, cloaked body and sober colouring imbue it with an identity that goes beyond caricature.

I imagine that there are more pieces like this around, and would be pleased to find out who the maker is. The impressed monogram at the base reads ‘IC’, or ‘TD’, or similar.

 

Mystery potter #26: FJM

This 44 cm high bottle is thrown from three-and-a-half kilos of brown stoneware clay.  The ribbed and grogged body is glazed in two layers. The reduction overglaze speckles to reveal the oxide  layer underneath, breaks to rust The ribbed and grogged body is glazed in two overlapping layers. The first is a thin layer of brown. The second is a speckled grey glaze that opens to a wide underskirt on one side. Several finger widths at the base have been left unglazed, making a feature of the curved and overlapping glaze layers.  The potter has impressed his initials – FJM – in a large square on the unglazed surface.

I know nothing about this potter and my database has given me no clues. I only have a handful of potters with the initials FM and they all have their own distinctive marks or styles. I am guessing that this piece was made in the  1970s by someone sourcing their clays and glazes from local materials, as many did at that time. The finish is not perfect. There is a curious circular indentation in the base which must have occurred before firing as it is chiselled and scored. The size and weight would have made it a challenging piece to throw.  These are also what lends it its appeal. The large bottle shape makes for a good decorator item and the weight lends it stability on the floor.

 

Mystery potter #25: Asterisk

This platter made of an unusual brown stoneware is 4.5 cm high and 37.5 cm in diameter. The sand-coloured glaze applied over an iron oxide base, breaks to brown at the edges, and to a brown shadow where it has been thinly applied. Incised lines define the rim and base, on which a stylised gum tree has been painted in oxides, giving an overall sepia effect.

On the side is a small high-relief medallion with an impressed asterisk or eight-spoked wheel. The seller, who lives in Melbourne, acquired it in the 1980s but couldn’t remember the maker.

Buyers of contemporary Australian pottery on eBay will know this seller well as pdubooks. He has been gradually disposing of a large collection of commercial and studio pottery amassed mainly from Victorian sources in the 1970s, 80s and 90s, and salted down in tea chests.  He sold us one of the first items we bought on eBay in 2004, a little Les Blakebrough jug from 1973,  and we have been regular customers ever since.

His listings often contain small snippets of knowledge which I have been assiduously recording in my database. He is also the source of quite a few of my mystery potters.  He must have visited a large number of outlets selling pottery during his collecting years, buying pieces that pleased him, not necessarily by well-known makers.

I was glad to handle this platter again when I unpacked it, and wondered again who was using such a distinctive mark. Perhaps I will know by the time we open the gallery in the Spring…

 

Mystery potter #24: R. Hooper

This handbuilt earthenware vase has an ovoid base from which the rounded body swells, giving it a definite front and back. The  long tapered neck ends in a slightly flared mouth. The high-gloss ivory glaze with fine craquelature is offset by a dark green hand-painted line around the mouth and double circles on both sides containing an abstract foliate design.

The vase is quite tall – 27 cm high. Although it has the form and delicacy of a bud vase, it is a substantial piece, well-balanced on its flat base, with the narrow neck appropriately muscular where it rises from the body.

The glaze covers the base in the style of studio pottery from an earlier period, and underneath the glaze the potter has inscribed a name and date – ‘R. Hooper 1966′.

This is the only piece by this potter that I’ve seen but it has a professional feel and I suspect that more examples will turn up over time.  We bought it on eBay from a South Australian seller. I have checked all the usual sources, including the main South Australian resource for this period [1], with no luck.

1. Ceramics in South Australia 1836-1986 : From Folk to Studio Pottery / by Noris Ioannou, Adelaide: Wakefield Press, 1986.

 

Mystery potter #23: Flinn

This huge (75 cm tall) handbuilt stoneware vase is marked on the side with the impressed stamp  ‘Flinn’.  The surface has been roughly carved and scored to look like a piece of hewn wood and then salt-glazed. We bought it late last year at a Shapiro auction (Australian Studio Ceramics 1930-1990, lot 191). The auction catalogue dates it to around 1975.

This was the first time we had seen an auction dedicated to our direct period of interest since we started on our Australian pottery venture. We viewed the catalogue with some trepidation. It challenged the primary weakness of our business plan – the fact that we will have very little capital left after building the house and gallery to devote to the opportunistic purchase of stock. We will have to start selling soon in order to fund new purchases.

Our primary strengths are the stock we already have in hand and our developing knowledge of Australian contemporary pottery and the prices pieces are starting to fetch on the secondary market.  We therefore went through the catalogue with great care, identifying only those lots that would fill significant gaps in our collection. For instance, we didn’t yet have a Bernard Sahm (lot 182) and we also yearned after an example of Victor Greenaway’s sculptural work from the 1970s (lot 183). Although both of us had been travelling a lot for work, we decided that we had to attend in person and drove up to Sydney for the night, staying in a ‘cosy’ room at the nearby Hughenden Hotel.

The Flinn was not on our shortlist because it was by an unknown maker with no presence that we could find in the published literature or on the Internet. Its size made it an object of conversation at the auction, but no-one else could place the artist either, in spite of quite a bit of knowledge in the room; and this made it difficult for potential bidders to appraise the work and its investment value. I am not sure what made us take a punt and bid high enough to win it.  I think that in the end we just liked it. Now it is spending its days soaking up the hot January sun on the deck of our new house, just outside the workroom, and waiting to be recognised through this entry.

 

Mystery potter #22: Sergio Sill

The base of this tall (23 cm high) Shino-glazed stoneware bottle is inscribed with the potter’s signature but it is quite hard to read. Luckily, there is  also an impressed seal which I have described in my marks database as “a square with a bird or seagull flying in front of a circle or sun above two wavy lines or the sea”.

When we bought this bottle in Canberra at the Geelong Street Antique Centre, I knew that I had seen the mark before. As soon as I got home, I searched for it and uttered a cry of triumph when there was a hit. We had bought two other pieces by the same potter in an antique store in Gunning on our way home from Gulgong in July. Then I realised that we still had a mystery potter on our hands.

The signature is clearer on this charger (one of the Gunning pieces) and, back in July, I had hazarded a guess that it says ‘Jennifer Gill’. Clearly, there is a Canberra connection, but I hadn’t been able to find out anything more about this potter then, and I still can’t.

The good thing is that the rather ornate descriptions of marks in my database are starting to reap benefits. I try to describe pictorial or emblematic marks using keywords that my future self  might use. While I don’t yet know anything about Jennifer Gill (?) I can rest assured that, when another pot turns up with this mark I will be able to make the connection.

Postscript

A reader has kindly let me know that this potter is Sergio Sill and that the Shino glaze is typical of his work. I blush to say that, packed away in our container are some other Sill pieces correctly ascribed and that my ‘trusty’ database failed me on this one.

Sergio Sill was born in Italy in 1946 and arrived in Australia in 1951. As a young man, he trained and worked as an architect, then from 1975-1979, completed a Diploma of Art and Design at the Preston Institute of Technology, majoring in ceramics and Sumie painting. He set up his first pottery studio in Hawthorn, Victoria, in 1978.  In 1982 he relocated to Upper Lansdowne on the mid-north coast of NSW and established the Mt Coxcombe Pottery there. During the 1980s and early 1990s, he specialised in wood-fired stoneware with Shino, Chun, Celadon and natural ash glazes. In 1991, he changed directions again and began a professional painting career.

• “Sergio Sill”, Pottery in Australia, 25 (1), August 1986, p. 27.
• “Sergio Sill”, CV in My heritage my home (catalogue of an exhibition of the artist’s paintings held at Rose Cottage, St Ives, 16 June – 2 August, 2008).