Warrandyte Pottery

Reg Preston showing pottery at Warrandyte.  Photo copyright Commonwealth Government.

Designer	Warrandyte Pottery
Maker	Reg Preston
Marks	Warrandyte Pottery stamped in black ink to base
Description	Plain white ceramic bowl dipped in multi coloured monochrome colours to bowl. Perforated white handle.
Number
Production Date
Width	110mm 4.1/2”
Depth	47mm 1.7/8”
Length (with handle)	170mm 6.11/16”
Weight	165gm 6oz
Volume	250ml
Acquisition	Antique Bazaar, Prahran, Victoria

Reg Preston was born in Sydney, New South Wales in 1917. He travelled to England in 1938 and studied sculpture at the Westminster school of Art in London. On his return to Australia he spent three months in 1944 working at the Melbourne Technical College with John Barnard Knight and Klytie Pate. He was also working at Cooper and Cooke’s Porcelain factory at 774 Glenhuntly Road, Caulfield, Victoria in 1945-46. In 1947 he established a pottery studio at Warrandyte. He produced a range of domestic wares like these ramekins. In 1958, Preston and his wife set up the Potters’ Cottage at Warrandyte, Victoria. During the 1960s Preston and Dunn produced a line using the name “Ceres”. Reg died in Wonthaggi, Victoria on the 14^th June 2000.

Slip glazed plain light-weight ramekins, stamped "Warrandyte Pottery" to base. The style is that of Reg Preston, one of the founding members of “Potters Cottage”. The pottery group was started up after a visit from Allan Lowe in 1958. Potters worked from Walsh’s Old Bakery and dug their own clay from the Kangaroo Ground Quarries. While some of the potters at the Potters Cottage made slip-cast wares their major stoneware works were in time collected by galleries lending the role of the craft potter a far greater significance than that of the designers, potters and decorators that worked at mainstream potteries. The making and sale of these ramekins in volume may have been done simply as a fund raising activity.

The five founding members from 1958 were Reg Preston, Phyllis Dunn, Artec Halpern, Gus McLaren and Charles Wilton; three other members joining in 1961 were Sylvia Halpern, Elsa Ardern and Kate Janeba. The only founding member who was not a potter was the architect John Hipwell who acted as the group's President.

Potters Cottage was officially opened in 1958 by Dame Mabel Brookes, wife of the Governor of Victoria, Sir Dallas Brookes. It was a small miner’s cottage in Research Road near the Warrandyte Bridge. It was then known as “Moonlight Cottage”, because the gold miner who built it in the 1890s worked in the Caledonia Gold Mine by day, and built his cottage by moonlight. By 1969 the Potters Cottage Co-op had built a restaurant where people were able to have their meals served on and in the pottery that was made by local craftspeople.

The co-operative was established for the purpose of making and selling handmade Australian pottery. The potters produced beautiful, functional studio pottery with attention to shape, decoration and glaze, bringing traditional craft together with modern. Whilst they shared certain principles in their work, the distinctive style and individuality of each artist is strongly evident. Their shared idealistic belief that modern, handmade pottery could enhance the quality of contemporary life was central to their philosophy.

The Co-op built a pottery school where people could learn to make their own pottery.

A group of students from this pottery school went on to form their own co-op, Stonehouse Potters in 1972, which is still flourishing. As well as the significant numbers of potters in the region, the Pottery Expo in Warrandyte each autumn highlights this important artistic tradition