John Barnard Knight

Designer	John Barnard Knight
Maker	John Barnard Knight
Marks	Incised “Janet Grey”, Janet Grey Studios” and “Janet Grey Australia” to unglazed base.
Description	Small mould formed steep sided bowl with mainly marine ornamented handles angled down the outside. Harlequin interiors with plain gloss glazed exteriors.
Condition	Some age related cracking due to thickness of material
Number
Production Date	Early 1950s
Width	92mm
Depth	45mm
Length (with handle)	118mm
Weight	150gm
Volume	220ml
Acquisition
Rameking Reference Number	BAK 001 BAK 002 BAK 003 BAK 004 BAK 005

John Barnard Knight was born in Warracknabeal, Victoria in 1910. 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. They both then went on to teach at RMIT. She left after ten years while he continued on until the mid 1970s. 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.” He also had a 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 died in Melbourne, Victoria in 1993.