More on sources

This blog has a statistics page that tells me something about its users. The number one referrer is still You can find anything on the Intertubes but the figures do show that a very select audience is finding things of interest here and staying to explore links to other pages.

The statistics page also tells me what links on the blog get used. In the sidebar of the blog, there is a set of bookmarks to websites on Australian pottery. This is a feed from a del.icio.us account where I bookmark and tag websites as I find them. Almost no-one goes to the full set of bookmarks from the blog so I thought that I would say a little more about this feature and why I have included it.

My main Links page acts as a guide to reference works on Australian pottery and is very selective. The del.icio.us account aims to be a comprehensive list of links to Australian pottery websites. Rather than maintaining this as a static html page, I use del.icio.us to bookmark and tag websites as I find them.

I am constantly adding new bookmarks and would be very pleased to hear of websites that I’ve missed.

 

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.

 

More on sources

Geoff Ford’s Encyclopedia of Australian Potter’s Marks documents potters and potteries active before 1975 but includes marks used after this period. I thought it might be useful to provide an index of entries in the encyclopedia for potters active in the 1960s-1970s and beyond. Having marks recorded for these potters provides a good start but collectors will need to go to a wide range of other directories to cover the field.

Alexander, Doug
Arden, Elsa
Beck, Robert
Blakebrough, Les
Bovill, Gillian
Brereton, Kevin
Carnegie, Francis
Douglas, Molly
Dunn, Phil
Englund, Ivan
Englund, Patricia
Garnsey, Wanda
Garrett, John
Gazzard, Marea
Gilbert, John
Greenaway, Victor
Halpern, Artur
Halpern, Stanislav

Halpern, Sylvia
Hick, William
Hughan, Harold
Juckert, Eric
Keys, Eileen
Laycock, Helen
Laycock, Peter
Leckie, Alex
Le Grand, Henri
Levy, Colin
Lowe, Allan
McConnell, Carl
McLaren, Gus
McLaren, Betty
McMeekin, Ivan
Memmott, Harry
Mitchell, Cynthia
Moon, Milton

Pate, Klytie
Peterkin, Les
Preston, Reg
Rushforth, Peter
Sadler, Ken
Sahm, Bernard
Sayers, Joan
Shaw, Edward
Smith, Derek
Smith, Ian
Sprague, Ian
Taylor, David
Travis, Peter
Tuckson, Margaret
Warren, Peggy
Welch, Robin
Wilton, Charles

 

More on sources

In the fortieth anniversary issue of Pottery in Australia (Vol. 40, #3, 2001) there is a series of articles on the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s that surveys major trends in Australian pottery since 1962, when the journal was first published. These are available online. The author is Karen Weiss, a Sydney writer and potter.

A small book simply called Pottery by Janet Mansfield (Sydney : Fontana/Collins, 1986) gives a really interesting overview of what it was like to make a living as a potter in the mid 1980s through interviews with a number of practising potters.

Janet Mansfield is one of Australia’s master potters. She edited Pottery in Australia from 1976-1990 and now edits Ceramics: Art and Perception. This is an international journal and, like Craft Arts International, which is also published in Australia, reflects the surprising prominence Australia plays as a producer of arts and crafts in the global arena.

In 2004 the Melbourne gallery Skepsi on Swanston held an exhibition called Celebrating the Master. The published exhibition catalogue shows a good selection of the work of “renowned Australian ceramists” and also publishes a picture of their marks.

 

Sources

There are thousands of Australian contemporary potters and no single definitive reference work. The best place to find books on Australian pottery in general or on specific potters is Libraries Australia. Only the masters have books written about them. Information about other potters has to be gleaned from directories, exhibition and auction catalogues and book and journal indexes.

Over time the Potters’ Society of Australia has issued a number of directories of its members. These contain short biographies of the potter and, in many cases, an illustration of the potter’s mark. The society (now the Ceramics Association of Australia) stopped publishing printed directories a few years ago and now maintains an online Australian Ceramics Directory.

Many potters are not represented in the published directories. If you have a name it is always worth trying an Internet search. Some potters and potteries have a web presence - a personal website, a CV on a gallery website, a listing in eBay or another trading post or an entry in a state association or local society, business directory or travel guide. I maintain a set of bookmarks to Australian pottery websites on del.icio.us and this is growing into a useful resource for potters with a current or archived web presence. Some of this information can be quite ephemeral, however, and many potters and potteries are invisible on the Internet.

The good news is that things are improving daily. The Australian Dictionary of National Biography is now available online, for example, and this has given the Canberra potter Henri Le Grand a persistent web presence. Another emerging resource is the Dictionary of Australian Artists Online. The Powerhouse Museum has also seeded search engines with some of its records. A Google search on Reg Preston now retrieves a list of 28 items in the Museum’s collection. A number of the key journals are also publishing their indexes online, or even whole articles.

If you are really interested in Australian contemporary pottery, it is worth trying for a complete set of Pottery in Australia (now the Journal of Australian Ceramics). Back issues are regularly offered for sale through secondhand dealers. Other key journals include Ceramics: Art and Perception, Craft Australia and Craft Arts International.

Volume 29, number 2 (1990) of Pottery in Australia is a special index edition which indexes all of the issues back to the first volume in 1962. The website also has an online index for the years 2000 to date and the publishers are working on the gap years. The online index is an author/title index with short abstracts, whereas the 1990 index is more complete, listing most of the names mentioned in articles.

Art and craft journals are also indexed in services like Austart (1987 to date) and APAIS (1978 to date online but printed indexes go back to 1945). Factiva indexes Australian newspapers and Australian Art Sales Digest and Australian Art Auction Records list the prices fetched for auctioned works, although not for work changing hands through online auctions. Austart is free. The others are subscription services but you may have access through your library.

Online auction sites are also a useful source of information. Listings do not stay around for long but can provide details about an item or its provenance and pictures of potters’ marks. Australian contemporary pottery is generally listed under the Australian Pottery category on eBay, mixed up with pieces from the earlier period. Make sure you go to the Australian eBay (http://www.ebay.com.au) not the international one. OZtion, an Australian auction site, also has an Australian Pottery category.