David and I have finally acquired our first Ivan McMeekin pot – a small jug made between 1953 and 1958. It has a very dark reduced glaze with sgraffito decoration over a fine, dense, stoneware body. The base is marked with McMeekin’s impressed ‘IM’ next to the crossed pick and shovel seal he designed for the pottery he had just set up at the Sturt Craft Centre at Mittagong, NSW.
It is hard to imagine how extraordinarily accomplished even a modest piece like this must have looked to Australian potters learning to work with stoneware in the Anglo-Oriental tradition for the first time. We are very pleased to have a piece from this period. It will go into our own collection for now as work by Ivan McMeekin doesn’t turn up very often on the secondary market.
Since starting the Australian Potters’ Marks project two years ago, I have been spending most of my research time preparing topics for publication on the Identifying Australian Pottery group. This is my first “known potter” entry for a while. As the Ivan McMeekin topic has already been published with images of works from the collections of other members of the project (the lucky things), I will just link to it here.