David Jones

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).