Dorian Sands

Thomas Percy Sanders was born on the 16^th of February 1924. Others record his birth in 1921 or 1925, but it was actually 1924. After serving in the Royal Australian Air Force as an Aircraftsman in WW2, Tom moved north from Melbourne and started working in Guy Boyd's Sydney pottery as a potter and ceramic decorator. He moved back to Melbourne in 1949 and worked at the Hoffmann pottery in East Brunswick. He spent a year with Arthur Boyd at Murrumbeena in suburban Melbourne before setting up his own pottery "T & E Sanders" at Eltham in 1950. Following the establishment of Montsalvat in 1934, Eltham was becoming a centre for what was later to be called the alternative lifestyle. He produced this piece decorated in pseudo-aboriginal art style using the name "Dorian Sands", incised to the base. His work is said to have been influenced by Guy Boyd and John Perceval. I tend to think that his skill as a potter and artist probably influenced them. Tom was part of that talented group of artists who moved to London in the late 1950s eg: Sydney Nolan, Arthur Boyd, Charles Blackman Brett Whitely and Barry Humphries. There is an advertisement for his ramekins in South Australia in 1950. In 1964, a black and white 16mm film entitled “The Lively Arts” featured Tom. Using his pseudonym Dorian Sands, he also produced a series of sgraffito decorated zodiac inspired ramekins. They can be costly so if you find one, buy it.

Between 1969 until 1971, Tom and John Olsen completed a large ceramic mural entitled “Eastern World” at the University of Melbourne in the courtyard of the Physics Building. Tom's son,Christopher Sanders was born in Melbourne in 1952. He started working in his father’s pottery at Eltham in 1972 and continues working today. Yet another example of following in father's footsteps. The start of Christopher’s career coincided with Tom’s serious illness and Tom stopped working until 1980. Some of the ramekins incised "Dorian Sands" are very similar in design to those of Arthur Boyd, so he obviously used some of the designs when he moved to Eltham. As well as ceramics, Tom was also a designer whose work was reproduced in prints as well as tapestry. He also made blanks that were decorated by artist John Olsen. Examples are in the Powerhouse Museum.

In 1993 Tom Sanders published, “Spare the Face, Gentlemen, Please”, a “world wind tour of the sordid and sorry catacombs of the local art world with all its meanness, deceit, pretensions and betrayals” (John Yule, from inside the jacket cover of Spare the Face). It also reflects on his time in the army (except he was in the Air Force), living abroad and his friendships. Illustrated by Arthur Boyd the images are raw and immediate, often shocking. The illustration for the title of the book, refers to the words of Marshall Ney after the battle of Waterloo to the firing squad just about to shoot him to “spare the face, gentlemen, please”. Sanders wonders if he will say too much and will we, the reader ‘spare the face’. Will he be cut down again by the art world which had exiled him some ten years before?

What does he mean by “cut down again by the art world which had exiled him some ten years before?” Probably referring to the emerging underground scene of the time that rejected those artists of the previous generation that had moved from radical to established; a curious thing that happens every thirty years or so.