Harold Hughan

Designer	Harold Hughan
Maker	Harold Hughan
Marks	Painted H Hughan faintly to base in oxide and incised H  G  I
Material	Glazed earthenware clay
Description	Shallow bowl with small curved handle.  Glazed in brown “avocado” finish.  Unglazed footring.
Condition	Very good
Number	No number
Production Date	After 1945
Width at rim	110mm
Width at Base	55mm
Depth	35mm
Length (with handle)	150mm
Weight	230gm
Volume	240ml
Acquisition	Purchase Australian Pottery at Bemboka 25 October 2013
Rameking Reference Number	HUG 001

Harold Randolph Hughan (1893-1987), potter was born on 11 July 1893 at Mildura, Victoria, the second of ten children of Victorian born Randolph Hughan, Gardener, and his English-born wife Emily, née Clayton. Of slight build, and known to close friends simply as `Buzz’, Hughan was described by Kenneth Hood, who had championed his work, as being, like his pots, `reserved and unassuming’.  Much of Harold’s childhood was spent at Hamilton, Victoria.  In 1910 he moved to Geelong and retrained, by correspondence, as an Electrical Engineer, hence the nickname “Buzz”.  

Having previously served in the Militia for some years, on 27 October 1915 Hughan enlisted in the 1^st Australian Imperial Force.  He saw action on the Western Front in 1916-18 with the 3rd Divisional Signal Company and the 44th Battalion.  In November 1917 Sergeant Hughan was commissioned and in March 1918 promoted to Lieutenant. On the 2^nd of September 1919 he married Lily Booth at the parish church of St James, Toxteth Park, Liverpool, England.  They arrived in Melbourne in February 1920 and his AIF appointment terminated on 14 April. He continued to serve in the Militia, rising to Major in the Volunteer Defence Corps (Home Guard) during World War II.

Born in 1893 he was of an older generation, but as he didn't take up pottery until 1940 he is situated firmly in the post-war pottery movement.  The beginning of his interest in ceramics coincides neatly with the publication of A Potter's Book, which he first read in 1940, the year it was published.  After several jobs, Hughan moved to Melbourne and joined the firm of Oliver J. Nilsen, for whom he worked as an electrical engineer until his retirement in 1963. Long interested in crafts, including woodwork and weaving, he was introduced to pottery in the early 1940s by his wife and their son, Robert, who had taken it up as a hobby.

Bernard Leach’s A Potter’s Book (1940) attracted him to studio pottery in the Anglo-Japanese tradition; C. F. Binns’s The Potter’s Craft(1910) taught him to throw pots on a wheel he devised from the crankshaft of a motorcar engine. He soon built his own kiln and made stoneware in a workshop behind his Glen Iris home.  He made his own kick-wheel and started using feldspar and iron oxide to create celadon and tenmoku glazes with occasional use of dolomite for special effects.  His research into stoneware bodies and glazes was aided by Robert who was a ceramic technologist with the CSIRO.  He was strongly influenced by Bernard Leach, teaching himself to throw with the book propped up in front of him so that he could follow the illustrations.

In 1950 Hughan would contribute a chapter to Australian ceramic history by staging the first major exhibition of stoneware ceramics at the Georges department store gallery in Melbourne. His first retrospective exhibition was held in 1968 at the National Gallery of Victoria and a second exhibition (an exceptional honour) was held at the gallery in 1983 to commemorate his ninetieth birthday. In the catalogue accompanying this second exhibition, the then Director of the gallery, Patrick McCaughey, wrote that 'More than any other Australian ceramist Harold Hughan has been able to absorb the feel and colour of that landscape into his own practice and so returned something authentically and familiarly Australian to us.

With the greatest of goodwill, it is hard to see how this was the case.  Rather than making identifiably Australian pottery, Hughan actually worked in what was a powerful global style, that of Anglo-Oriental ceramics.  One couldn't tell whether a faceted celadon glazed jar was made in Melbourne or London, and even when Hughan produced a magnificent late series of temmoku glazed platters with decorations based on Australian wildflowers, the actual origin of the flora was not at all apparent, buried as they were in a calligraphic cipher of brown on black.

These were international pots made in response to Leach's philosophy of a timeless standard in ceramics and the primacy of traditional Oriental techniques and they were made in Australia just as they were made everywhere A Potter's Book was read.  The Powerhouse Museum has a potters wheel designed and made by Harold) in about 1941. This is probably the first potters wheel to be made in Australia for use in studio pottery. 

Hughan drew inspiration from the Herbert Kent collection of Chinese ceramics at the National Gallery of Victoria: his great love was the pots of the Song and T’ang Dynasties, but his interests encompassed many aspects of historic and contemporary practice. Seeking an `Australian idiom’, he also experimented with new forms. It was important to him that his pots were domestic, functional and affordable; yet they were also distinguished by subtle shapes and beautiful glazes, particularly the Orient-inspired celadons and tenmokus.

He gained a devoted following, especially for his large platters, decorated with oriental motifs, native iris or sprays of bamboo. While prolific, he worked at his own pace well into his nineties. `I do not make pottery for a living’, he said in 1984, `it [is] purely for pleasure, and always has been’.

An exhibition of Hughan’s work at Georges Gallery, Melbourne, in 1950, led to his becoming one of the first contemporary studio potters to be represented in the National Gallery of Victoria. Later exhibitions included major retrospectives at the NGV (1969, 1983).  His work has also been collected by the National Gallery of Australia; most Australian State and regional galleries and by the Victoria and Albert Museum, London.  A member of the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria since 1949, he was invited in 1970 to be the patron of the Victorian Ceramic Group, which established an award in his name. In 1978 he was appointed MBE.

He started potting full-time on his retirement in 1963 and remained a most significant and influential figure until his death in 1987. The National Gallery of Victoria showed a retrospective exhibition (with catalogue) in 1969, and another on the occasion of his 90th birthday in 1983, when Craft Australia published a special supplement.   He continued making pots into his nineties, dying in 1987 at the age of 94. His early works are marked H GI (for Glen Iris) in oxide. Works from 1945 are marked with an impressed H GI and may also be signed in oxide.

Predeceased by his wife (1966), and survived by his son, he died at Prahran, Melbourne, on 23 October 1987, and was buried in Springvale cemetery.  In 1978 he was awarded the MBE for his services to pottery.  In the 1940s, potters wheels would have been imported, but as an engineer, he had the ability to design and make his own. He was assisted in the building of kilns and development of clays by his son Robert (Bob) Hughan (b. 1925)

Sources

http://www.australianpotteryatbemboka.com.au/

http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/?irn=150295#ixzz2ip2rqVBC Under Creative Commons License: Attribution Non-Commercial

http://damonmoon.com/articles/across-the-ditch.html