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.

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).

David and I have just spent a week in Perth. While there we visited the Fremantle Arts Centre and bought this wood-fired bowl by Stewart Scambler, a long-time potter and teacher who is currently president of the Ceramic Arts Association of Western Australia (CAAWA). Scambler specialises in wood firing and he and his wife Trish also produce maiolica domestic ware.

That same afternoon we were lucky enough to catch The State of the West: A Ceramic Survey 2008 at the Central TAFE Art Gallery. This exhibition, which closed yesterday, was a survey of works made in the last year by 45 of the best established and emerging Western Australian ceramic artists as selected by CAAWA. Many of the artists represented, including Scambler himself, were known to us but we were able to ‘collect’ a number of new potters.

David thought that the ceramic sculptures in the exhibition by Bela Kotai were standouts - monumental in form yet finely carved. I loved the figurative works by Fleur Schell, Amanda Shelster and Wing Chow. We would have been happy to find a home for almost every piece, but selected just three - raku pots in contrasting styles by Njalikwa Chongwe and Francine Haine and a lustre vase by Tova Dilkes-Hoffman.

An exhibition catalogue on CD was for sale for $10. It contained a pdf file with a complete set of artists’ statements, CVs and pictures, but no marks, unfortunately! I was pleased to have the file but would have liked to see this information published online with a “creative commons” licencing approach and a bookmarkable location. (I hope this will happen now the exhibition is closed.)

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 Malcolm 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.

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).

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’.

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.

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.

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.

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.