Allan & Peg Lowe

Allan James George Lowe was born in Collingwood, an inner suburb of Melbourne, Victoria in 1907 to Allan Frank Lowe and Ada Alice Wilcox.  Having originally trained as a painter, he set up a short-lived studio in the northern Melbourne suburb of Merlynston (just up the road from Pentridge Prison).  In the late 1920s, he taught himself pottery, learning to throw, studying glazes at the State Library of Victoria and building a kiln with the help and advice of a friend at Hoffman Potteries.  He learnt pottery from Gladys Kelly at the Working Men's College (then RMIT, now RMIT University) in Melbourne, before moving in 1930 to Hoffmans Brickworks in Brunswick where he worked making pottery. 

In 1931, Allen is recorded as living at 42 Mashoobra Street Coburg.  He is listed as being a “Window Dresser”.  Allan then moved to Eaglemont, an outer suburb of Melbourne in 1932.  In 1936 he was living in “Thrums” Malvern, listed as “Traveller”, before moving, with his family, including Frank and Ada to 27 & 55-57 Kiaora Parade, Fern Tree Gully in 1939, then a country town.  He is also recorded as being a “Traveller”.  Don’t think he was a Gypsy, in those days, a Travelling Salesman was known as a traveller. It seems he never bothered to update the Electoral Roll. During the second-world-war, he worked at the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation at Fishermans Bend, at the mouth of the Yarra river. 

Being a protected industry at the time, he was ineligible to serve in the armed forces.  He began making pottery full-time at Fern Tree Gully in 1944 after the war ended.  Allan worked in KiaOra Parade Fern-Tree-Gully for many years with a simple kick wheel built by his father out of parts from an old petrol bowser. His earthenware was characterised by earthy tones and simple abstract forms

The Ferntree Gully Arts  Society had its beginnings over sixty years ago in a letter sent by Allan to the Secretary of the Ferntree Gully Shire, suggesting that an Art Exhibition be held to "develop the cultural and appreciative  level of our residents, and (the money raised) donated to the Red Cross to aid fighting men."

These wheel-thrown ramekins are examples of their work. The ones by Allan’s wife Kathleen (Peg) Lowe are slightly smaller than those made by Allan. These ramekins were sometimes accompanied by dishes or saucers also inscribed "Allan Lowe".   Some of the works from the 1970s that were signed 'Lowe' attributed to him were sometimes made by his son Peter Grosvenor Lowe (b 1944).  Peter and wife Marian are artists in Dunolly, Victoria; they both helped Allan and Peg in Fern Tree Gully.  In 1947, Klytie Pate, and Alan Lowe, became the first ceramicists to have their studio pottery purchased by the National Gallery of Victoria. A ginger jar by Pate and a piece by Alan Lowe were the first acquisition of Australian studio work by a state gallery.

Alan’s work combined Chinese forms with Aboriginal motifs.  Allan would sometimes throw earthenware pots and Bill Onus, a well known local Aboriginal artist would paint them.  They worked at "The Hut", an artist's co-operative in Ferntree Gully, where Alan and other artists would show their work and practice life drawing.  Allan is considered to be one of the first potters to have drawn sympathetically on Aboriginal colours, themes and motifs.  Much of his work shows the elegant simplicity of oriental design.  He made several trips to central Australia in the 1950s and 1960s to draw inspiration from the indigenous people there.


Aboriginal-style imagery was immensely popular in Australia after the Second World War when local designers, and Australians at large, were searching for a national cultural identity. Australia's Indigenous heritage provided a rich source of inspiration. Designers and craftspeople alike looked towards Indigenous art, particularly to rock art, to source and modify motifs to suit contemporary fashions. The result was a stylised imagery that often blended the colours of the desert landscape with forms of cross-hatching and references to dot painting, native plants and animals, animal footprints, spears, boomerangs and Aboriginal people themselves. These appeared on the inexhaustible range of domestic wares produced at semi-commercial potteries in Australia in the 1950s.

The Pottery Group of the Warrandyte Mechanics Institute and Arts Association was formed following a talk by Alan Lowe from the Ferntree Gully Arts Society 1955.  Allan and Klytie Pate were both awarded a Bronze medal at the 1956 Melbourne Olympics Art Festival, and, in 1979, Alan was made a Fellow of the Royal South Australian Society of Arts.

 A retrospective of his work was held by the National Gallery of Victoria in 1979, the year he ceased work.   Some of his work, and a set of his wife Peg’s ramekins are also held by Sydney’s Powerhouse Museum, but they don't call them ramekins. The Potters Cottage in Warrandyte started in 1958 after a visit from Allan. Sadly it is no longer what it used to be.  Allan died at the age of 93 in 2001.