Mystery potter #10: C

This spherical vase is only 10 cm (4 inches) high but it has a great deal of charm and assurance. The straw coloured body is painted freehand with burnt orange bands separated by thin brown lines. The interior is glazed a dark brown. This colour is also echoed on the two counterpoised curving arms. The base is faintly inscribed 13/4/95. The only other distinguishing mark is a painted ‘C’ that may have been added later. It was recently acquired and, apart from the date, I have no idea of its provenance.

 

Mystery potter #9: Tricuspid

This large, deep-bodied, stoneware bowl with reduced iron glaze and wax resist decoration has an impressed stamp in the form of a tricuspid. I have seen three pots now on eBay with this mark. From their style and provenance (the sellers are all based in Melbourne) they are likely to be the work of a potter active in Victoria in the 1970s and 1980s. Pots do travel but potters tend to exhibit and sell their work in their own state and sellers to source their listings locally.

Marks in the form of symbols can be hard to describe and I ended up using IP Australia’s Glossary of image descriptors to find a name for this one. The glossary is available as a PDF file about halfway down the Trademarks page on the IP Australia website. Just below this link is another useful tool that lets you find out how common a surname is in Australia. I’ve used this several times to infer the correct spelling of an inscribed name.

Potters’ marks are an important way - often the only way - of identifying a potter’s work. I doubt that many potters register their marks. I wonder how they go about choosing one and whether they are aware of other similar marks in use?

 

Mystery potter #8: Old Ballarat Pottery

This is a white earthenware, salt-glazed oil bottle with a classic shape enhanced by a row of beading where the neck starts to narrow. The mark shown here is from a sugar bowl that we have by the same maker. It looks like “OB” or “OMB” between two circular disks connected by a rod. This bottle is similar to work produced by Bendigo Pottery in the 1970s but I’ve only seen two pieces with this mark.

Bendigo Pottery is Australia’s oldest working pottery. It started operation in 1857 and is now a heritage tourist attraction with its own website. An article in Australian Decorative Pottery of the 1930s gives a good outline of its early history but does not cover the period from 1968 onwards when the production of salt-glazed Epsom ware was revived by Bill Derham (Peter Laycock, “Epsomware: A history of Bendigo Potteries Ltd,” Pottery in Australia, 9(1), 1970, 17-20).

We don’t collect Bendigo Pottery because there is so much of it around and it would engage our entire attention. However, we do have a small side interest in collecting representative pieces by individual throwers. This is made easy because, from 1970-1987, each thrower added his initials to the centre of the Bendigo Pottery Epsom stamp (Ford, p. 30). The large jug illustrated here was made by Allan Letts, who worked at the pottery from 1940-1974. (He went on to set up the Cannie Ridge Pottery in Harcourt in 1976). AG is Alex Gill. IP is Ian Preston. KT is Ken Tresize. WA. is William Akkermans. We have also seen AD, AI, GI, GL, HD, JG, JM, KC, KG, MC, NB, PB, PD and RG but I don’t know yet who these potters are.

I would really like to find out more about “OB” or “OMB” and if there is any relationship between the maker of this oil bottle and Bendigo Pottery.

Postscript

I now realise that this is one of the marks used by the Old Ballarat Pottery. The device is a mine headframe and the “M” is part of the structure.

Despite the quite large numbers of pieces from this pottery that are listed on eBay, I’m finding it surprisingly hard to find anything about it. I do know that it was a registered company from 1984-1994 located at 5 Elsworth Street and that it produced work in an old- fashioned style for the tourist market. A historical extract from the Australian Securities Commission shows that the Ballarat potter and educator John Gilbert was an officer of the company in its first years of operation. Some of its products were sold through a company called Faberware.

I don’t think that it had any formal association with Sovereign Hill, Ballarat’s gold mining activity park. The Edinburgh Pottery, which produces similar work, was opened there in 1972 and is still in operation.

In 1861, George Marks established a pottery on Creswick Road in Ballarat, near the Old Cemetery. There with the help of four boys he produced salt-glazed drain pipes, chimney pots and tiles for Ballarat builders as well as a quantity of wheel-thrown jars, flower pots and saucers, water monkeys, bread pans, butter pots, ginger beer bottles, etc. (Ballarat Star, August 16, 1870).

In 1878, Marks established a second pottery in Adelaide, leaving the running of the Ballarat Pottery mostly to his new partner Samuel Coyte. Within a few years the pottery ceased to produce domestic wares although it continued making pipes and fittings until 1928, when it was taken over by Martin Stoneware Pipe Ltd (Geoff Ford, Australian Pottery: The First 100 Years, 1995, p. 242).

All but one chimney of the factory and kilns were demolished in the 1960s, with the bricks being used to construct the Old Ballarat Village opposite Sovereign Hill (Ballarat Heritage Precincts Study. Part A. Volume 4. Creswick Rd & Macarthur St Heritage Precinct, 2006, page 10). Ford says that no domestic pottery has been found with a Ballarat Pottery stamp, which may mean that no stamp was used. So, as far as I can see, there is no relationship between the two potteries except by allusion.

 

Mystery potter #7: RB

This small spherical vase with short collared neck has a dark red glaze allowed to drip thickly at the base leaving the clay partially exposed. On one side is a circular decorative panel with a crackled ivory glaze and soft floral motifs in the same dark red colour. The vase is clearly stamped with the potter’s monogram, which looks like a reversed “R” sharing a stem with the letter “B”.

A large number of potters have the initials “RB”. All I can say with confidence is that this is not the signature I have recorded for Rick Ball, Robert Barron, Rolf Bartz, Robert Beck, Robin Best or Richard Brooks.

Monograms are often hard to read and I’m still not certain this says “RB”.

 

Mystery potter #6: Four circles and a line

I thought that I should give the large floor pot that I mentioned in the last post its own entry in case someone recognises the mark. This is a pot that we bought from a potter’s house and studio in Blamey Crescent, Campbell, ACT, in the late 1970s.

Bernard Sahm worried about the pots he sold getting broken in Nine Artist Potters (27), but perhaps an even more sobering fate awaits most pieces: that of losing their provenance and having to be judged on their own merits. I am shamed by the number of pots we own where we have forgotten the name of the maker or even when and where we bought them.

This is the case for a lot of pots listed on eBay. The reasons for selling are poignant. “I’ve had it for over thirty years and it’s never been used”. “It no longer goes with my decor”. Or perhaps the saddest comment of all: “It was an unwanted gift”. Once a piece is sent out into the world via eBay, a garage sale, an estate auction or an opportunity shop, unless it has a very distinctive style it must depend on its mark to be reunited with its maker, at least in spirit.

 

Mystery potter #5: JS/SJ

This reduction-fired round-bodied bottle was bought by the original owner from Aladdin Gallery in Elizabeth Bay, Sydney, in the 1970s. It has a finely-crazed celadon glaze with the upper half darkened by ash and an abstract motif on one side. The handle springs from high on the neck like the one on the Les Blakebrough carafe that I described in an earlier post. The potter’s mark is a heavily-impressed monogram in a square - either JS or SJ.

I can’t find any record of this mark in the published directories or indexes.

Jo Szirer, Joyce Scott and Jock (Hugh) Shimeld all use JS as a mark but the styles are different. John Stroomer signs his current work with his full name. I don’t yet have marks recorded for Jim Simson, Jan Skepper, John Smith, Jeff Springer, Judy Stanaway or Jill Symes - other potters in my database with the initials JS who were active in the 1970s or 1980s.

Sue Jones and Sheryl Ann Johnston use SJ as a mark but, again, the styles are different.

 

Mystery potter #4: CS / 82

This stoneware bowl with carved and cut-out rim has the potter’s incised mark on the base but I can’t make out the letters. Is this a known potter whose mark hasn’t been recorded in any of the published directories? Or is it one of the many extremely competent practitioners who do not have a public presence?

An eBay seller commented recently that a listed work had to be by a known potter because it was so well-made. In fact, many competent potters have no record in the published literature and no current web presence.

 

Mystery potter #3: Lyndsay Bedogni

Yesterday’s entry was written so that I could write about this 9 cm (3.5″) bottle with an impressed “LB” insignia on the base. It was posted on eBay earlier this year with a tentative attribution to Les Blakebrough. I am continuing to count it amongst my mystery pots.

Here are the names of the potters I know with the initials LB:

Leigh Bailie, Lyn Baker, Lesley Barnes, Lee Bartley, Leonard Bell, Louise Bennetts, Louise Boscacci, Lorna Boucher, Lisa Boyter, Lorna Brady.

Leigh Bailie, Lyn Baker and Louise Bennetts were students whose work featured in Pottery in Australia in the 1980s. I don’t know whether they went on to become practicing potters. The rest are, or have been, practicing potters in various locations around Australia.

Lesley Barnes, who sold her work at Warrandyte in the 1980s and 1990s, used her full name as an insignia. Leonard Bell, who established a pottery near Bendigo, Victoria, in 1976, used a mark very similar to Les Blakebrough’s “LB” but in conjunction with a “WP” mark for Woodstock Pottery. I don’t have a record yet of the marks used by the other LB potters.

Oh, Oh! A scary thought. What if it doesn’t say LB at all…

Postscript: I am now fairly certain that this is the mark used by the New Zealand potter Lyndsay Bedogni.

 

Mystery potter #2: ???

This handsome and austere salt glazed piece is a footed disc flattened on both sides and carved with a whorl pattern. It is 18cm (7″) tall. It does have a mark but I cannot decipher it. It resembles the work of the British potter Hans Coper (1920-1981) in its surface treatment and in the way it has been thrown, altered and assembled. Coper and his colleague Lucy Rie (1902-1995) influenced a number of Australian potters who travelled to England in the 1960s and 1970s.

I am not certain that this piece is Australian, only that it has an Australian provenance. I could say this about many of my mystery pots. This is one of the issues with collecting studio pottery. Australian collectors buy pieces by overseas potters and overseas potters visit or exhibit in Australia. The Adelaide auction house Scammells recently auctioned a collection of Danish studio pottery. Some of these pieces could well turn up in a few years’ time as mystery pots!

 

Mystery potter #1: R? MacReady

This beautifully made serving bowl with its finely speckled leopard skin glaze, and blaze of red colour has a quite legible signature - R? Macready. It was listed on eBay in March 2005. The glaze is characteristic of the potter’s work going by two similar pieces that have been listed on eBay since then, a teapot and a casserole dish. These have a full signature (see marks 2 and 3 below) but the first name is hard to decipher - Ruby? Ridge? - I’m not sure. I am guessing that this piece dates from the 1990s.