Jemba

Designer	Nixon Pottery, Sydney NSW.
Maker	Nixon Pottery 6a Mabel Street Hurstville
Marks	Incised “Jemba 118” to unglazed base
Description	Heart shaped thin-sided slipware bowl with clear gloss overglaze.  One piece moulded handle cast as part of bowl.
Decoration	Clear overglaze with brown interior. Hand painted Aboriginal motif painted to interior bottom of bowl.
Condition	Good condition.  No chips or cracks.  Some crazing consistent with age to overglaze.
Number
Production Date	1954/55
Width	110mm
Depth	37mm
Length (with handle)	160mm
Weight
Volume
Acquisition

This slipware ramekin was made in the 1950s and 1960s by the small company, Nixon Pottery 6a Mabel Street Hurstville, Sydney, New South Wales, not far from the quarry in South Hurstville.  It was one of dozens of small potteries operating in Sydney after the Second World War. Its main rival, was the Martin Boyd Pottery, the most significant pottery in Sydney at this time and was responsible for wares decorated with Aboriginal-style motifs. This Nixon ramekin features similar decoration - hand painted in a stylized manner and representing Aboriginal motifs that were a common feature of Australian pottery of the era. 

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. Most European makers had no concept of the inappropriateness of this, nor saw how they trivialized Aboriginal culture.  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 stylized 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.

While some of these domestic wares were made from thrown clay, many were moulded or slipcast and were usually decorated with mix-and-match colours and painted designs. The most popular forms of domestic ware included coffee sets, ramekin sets, dinner sets, and ashtrays and savoury dishes shaped like boomerangs. With restrictions on imports continuing after the war, these items proved immensely popular in Australia and featured in home-living journals, like 'Australian Home Beautiful'. Arising from this trend was an overseas market for Australian wares.  It appears that Nixon, like many other makers, did not need to advertize as it sold direct to stores.  It was these stores that advertized as required.

The pottery was made by "Jemba Pottery Pty Ltd", a short-lived New South Wales company operated by Dallas Raymond Nixon and his wife Betty.  They started out as "Nixons Art Productions" and became a company on the 12th of July 1954.  The company went bankrupt and folded on the 15th of September 1955, possibly due to ill health.  It couldn't have been too bad because Dallas didn't die until 1992.