Designer
|
Not known
|
Maker
|
Diana Pottery
Marrickville
|
Marks
|
Stamped in black
ink to base “David Jones Bronze Lustre Stoneware Ovenproof”
|
Material
|
Glazed slip
|
Description
|
Oval
bowl angled inwards from lower third.
Brown gloss glazed
ring to outside of bowl and entire inside of bowl Dark bronze colour matte glaze to whole of rest
of external body, unglazed foot
ring.
|
Condition
|
Very good
|
Number
|
No number.
|
Production Date
|
Mid 1960s
|
Width at rim
|
120mm
|
Width at Base
|
125mm
|
Depth
|
45mm
|
Length (with
handle)
|
160mm
|
Weight
|
245gm
|
Volume
|
450ml
|
Acquisition
|
Purchase,
Mill Antiques,
Daylesford 15th February 2020
|
Rameking
Reference Number
|
DAJ
001-004
|
Pickings have
been rather slim lately, so it came as a surprise that I came across these
recently. In their latter stages, the successors
to the Diana Pottery (on the same site) produced a series named “Dana.” Dana used the old “Nefertiti” pattern to make
these ramekins for the Sydney Department store, “David Jones.”
David Jones began in 1837 in Sydney, New
South Wales. The company grew, creating a national retail chain. In 1982, David Jones
bought Melbourne department store, Buckley & Nunn, including its properties
on Bourke Street. The first David Jones store in Melbourne opened on the Bourke Street site that same
year. Three years later, in 1985, David Jones acquired Adelaide department
store John Martins, but operated it as a separate entity to the more upmarket
David Jones-branded store.
During the Second
World War (1941) Eric Lowe, a Sydney potter got Government contracts to produce
ceramic wares for the armed forces. After the war, he changed production to domestic
pottery and throughout the 1950s, Diana was the largest and most prolific
pottery in New South Wales, producing hundreds of different products and
designs.
I think it fair
to say that you would have had a piece of Diana pottery in yours or your parent’s
home at some stage, probably a mixing bowl or vase. The pottery was located at
122-126 Marrickville Road, Marrickville, Sydney and it continued until the mid-1960s,
when cheap copies and imports caused a decline in sales.
They continued on
for a few more years calling their output “Dana”. Much of the Dana ceramics were copies of the
later Diana “Nefertiti” ramekins, with a rough textured exterior and a brown
glazed lip and interior. These are a lustre ware product made especially for
the David Jones Department Store in the early 1970s. Check out my Diana posts for lots more about
Diana. David Jones had previously made cream
slip vases with gold handles for a gift shop in the Imperial Arcade in Sydney
under the name “Imperial.”
Lustre ware, fashionable
in Australia in the 1950s and 1960s is produced by a process using a metallic overglaze
on pottery or porcelain to produce an effect of iridescence. Pigments
containing salts of gold and platinum are used.
It is produced by a second reduction firing at a lower temperature (640-740°C).
