Janet Grey

Designer	John Barnard Knight
Maker	John Barnard Knight
Marks	Incised “Janet Grey Studio” to unglazed base.
Description	Small mould formed steep sided bowl with mainly crown shaped ornamented handles angled down the outside.  Harlequin interiors with plain gloss glazed exteriors.
Condition	Some age related cracking due to thickness of material.  Crazing to interior glaze.
Number
Production Date	1954
Width	87mm
Depth	45mm
Length (with handle)	130mm
Weight	160gm
Volume	200ml
Acquisition	Australian Pottery at Bemboka
Rameking Reference Number	BAK 006 BAK 007 BAK 008 BAK 009

In February 1954, the young Queen Elizabeth became the first reigning monarch to visit Australia.  The Rameking was there perched on his fathers shoulders to get a look at the royal couple.  Hard to believe today, but the whole country went crazy during the tour, how some things change.  I still have the small Australian flag that I waved. 

Souvenirs were made and sold by the million and among the seemingly endless flow of tat, were these ramekins made to cash in on the frenzy.  Made to his standard bowl shape with the crown shaped handle added as a bit of relevance, thus making dating easy. 

John Arthur Barnard Knight was born in Warracknabeal, Victoria on the 9^th of April 1910.  His parents were Arthur Knight and Mabel Alice Barnard.  He was active from the early 1930s to the late 1970s. During most of this time, he taught pottery at what is now the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT). Prior to this, he and Klytie Pate had worked at Hoffman following their introduction of “Melrose” ware in 1930. 

John had previously studied art at what was then the School of Applied Art at the Melbourne Technical School; it is now the RMIT University.  He also studied the production methods at the pottery at Hoffmann Bricks in Brunswick and at the nearby Maribyrnong Potteries.  He worked in the studio of Napier Waller from 1932-33.

After graduating, he and Klytie joined the staff, teaching pottery, modelling and drawing.  She left after ten years while he continued on until 1975.  In 1939, he took charge of the Pottery Department. In 1940 he married Isabel Gwenda Grose, one of his students, and they established the Janet Grey Studio at South Yarra. They lived nearby at 43 Thanet Street Malvern. 

He served in the RAF from 1942-1945, then continued to expand the Janet Gray Studio and to re-organise the teaching of pottery at the school, establishing courses for the Commonwealth Reconstruction Training Scheme, and upgrading classes to certificate and diploma courses in 1949 and 1950. He is best known as an educator, continuing to teach at RMIT until 1975. His own work is signed 'J. A. Barnard Knight (painted or incised).

He was a man of firm opinion. An example of the can be found in “ACROSS THE DITCH:  Australian Ceramics in the Post War Period; It was at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology that Peter Rushforth, who had spent some years as a prisoner of the Japanese, was introduced to Leach's book (A Potter's Book ) by the ceramics teacher Jack Knight. As a firm believer in earthenware, Knight found this interest in stoneware and oriental ceramics difficult to comprehend; he sat outside in the sun reading a newspaper while Hamada demonstrated at RMIT in the 1960s, saying that they were 'always talking about stoneware ... can't understand them.” 

John also had his workshop in Malvern, a south-eastern suburb of Melbourne where he sold his work under several pseudonyms, one of these being "Janet Grey".   I do not know how he arrived at the name, but Dr Janet Grey was responsible for the now defunct milk for school children program in Victoria.  John retired with his wife to Flinders on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. He died in Victoria in 1993.