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

Charles Wilton

Designer	Charles Wilton 1916 - 2001
Maker	Charles Wilton
Material	Ceramic
Manufacture	Wheel Thrown
Marks	“Charles Wilton” incised to base
Description	Plain off white ceramic bowl with looped. Speckled blue grey overglaze brushed to exterior and top half of interior. Good condition for age.
Number
Production Date
Width	110mm 4.1/2”
Depth	50mm 1.15/16”
Length (with handle)	170mm 6.11/16”
Weight	260gm 9.3/4oz
Volume	250ml
Acquisition	Tyabb Packing House Antiques, Tyabb, Victoria September 2009

Charles Wilton was born in Glagow Scotland on 4^th August1916. After migrating to Melbourne Australia, he studied ceramics at the Melbourne Technical College, now the RMIT and began working with Eric Juckert at his studio in Caulfield. Eric had recently started this studio after working nearby with Una Dearbon, who had been making homewares for Melbourne department stores. Charles worked with Eric for about four years before moving to the then outer suburb of Croydon in 1940. He joined the Australian Air Force in 1942 and served as a corporal in the No 2 radio unit, eventually being discharged from a hospitals unit in 1946. He returned to Croydon but moved to Warrandyte the following year. He was a founding member of the Potters Cottage, this being a co-operative founded in 1958 for the purpose of making and selling handmade Australian pottery. These potters produced studio pottery intended to blend the old with the modern. The five founding members from 1958 were Reg Preston, Phyl Dunn, Arthur Halpern, Gus McLaren and Charles Wilton with three additional members joining in 1961. These were Sylvia Halpern, Elsa Ardern and Kate Janeba with the final member, Peter Laycock joining in 1969. Charles was a prolific producer of all types and colours of earthenware, stoneware and ceramics and he was a master of all forms from the naïve to very refined pieces.He moved to Phillip Island in the early 1970s and continued producing a variety of small ceramics until he retired in 1992. Charles died at Wonthaggi in 2001.

Orzel

These ramekins are marked “Orzel New Zealand” and have a matte underglaze with a trickle glaze effect. They have the gloss glaze reminiscent of Crown Lynn who took over Orzel.

Orzel pottery was produced by Cameron and Dorothy Brown who established their first small pottery in Waitakere, West Auckland in 1951. At first they called it Sherwood Pottery, and then, from around 1957, Titian Studio. They then moved the pottery to Henderson in 1958 and began experimenting with a wide range of decorative glazes for their wares. In 1965, they moved to Takanini. The Browns sold their company to Crown Lynn in 1967. They then set up another pottery, Orzel Industries in 1972 and created a number of decorative wares with a very nice trickle glaze effect. Their products look and feel very much like Crown Lynn but is less common.

Mystery Maker Marked "PFH"

These plain glazed ramekins are incised "PFH" in fairly primitive script. They appear to be mould cast with prominent stirrup marks to the base. Possibly "Picton Hopkins".

Crown Lynn

The New Zealand Society of Potters have reported that there are more potters per head of population in NZ than in any other country.  In the heady days of the ‘60s and 70s, almost everyone in NZ seemed to be a potter, or if they weren’t, they certainly knew one. Craft shops were everywhere and the pottery produced was earthy in colour and texture, domestic in scale and intended for use.

Clay in New Zealand was first used to produce bricks and pipes, however, as more people with skills in pottery and ceramics travelled from Europe, the ceramics industry grew. The largest period of growth was the 1870s and 1880s as potteries closed in Britain and many potters travelled to New Zealand where the growing ceramics market welcomed them. It was not until some of the early companies decided to produce domestic ceramics that they became successful. Many of their techniques including slip casting and press moulding were used to produce ranges of domestic ceramic pieces.

These types of Ramekins are marked "Made in New Zealand".  I have included them because NZ is so close to Australia and the top ones show some degree of artistic merit, even though they are mass-produced.

High gloss, graduated brown glaze. The brown slip glaze applied over the base matt glaze to create the graduated contrast in colour. This glaze extends over the rim to the inside. The glaze is in perfect condition outside as well inside. The colours are fresh.

These ramekins were made in the early 1970s at the Titian factory under licence from Crown Lynn, who began in 1854 when Rice Owen Clark made pipes to drain his farmland by wrapping logs in clay and firing them. This led to making pipes for neighbours and eventually becoming the Amalgamated Brick and Pipe Company.

During the Second World War, they produced millions of mugs and plates of varying quality for the American forces stationed in New Zealand and the Pacific, as well as tableware for the New Zealand military and domestic use. Quality improved and an increasing range of tableware eventually gained a reputation for being well made, in fact some was regarded as “unbreakable”.

Crown Lynn pottery was slipcast at the time and a trickle glaze technique was developed (as seen above) that is now sought after by collectors. In the late 1940s and early 1950s art pottery was developed. Until the late 1970s Crown Lynn was the largest producer of household pottery in the Southern Hemisphere.  In the late 1960s, Crown Lynn had an outlet at 3 Tivoli Street South Yarra, an upmarket suburb in Melbourne, Victoria. 

Crown Lynn bought Royal Grafton Fine China from Tams in the early 1970s. (More likely they just bought the name as the factory closed in 1972)  The New Zealanders were looking to expand into the UK and saw the acquisition of a local works as way of circumventing import quotas.  They believed that the Ottowa Agreement had made it difficult for New Zealand to compete in Britain.  They saw this acquisition as a means of accessing the US market.  In 1960, almost half of New Zealand’s ceramic production was exported to the U.K, yet thirty years later, almost all was imported.  Corporate neglect has been blamed for the ultimate demise of Crown Lynn.  


On the 5^th of May 1989 it was announced that Crown Lynn would close.  The plant and equipment was sent to Goh Ban Huat Berhad in Malaysia.  Curiously, Temuka Homewares, part of Pacific Retail Group Ltd is a good selling line of ceramic tableware.  Pacific are the owners of Ceramco who bought out Crown Lynn. 

Crown Lynn became Ceramco in 1974 with the factory eventually closing in 1989. All assets were then sold to GBH Porcelain of Malaysia. Artists Rudolf Boelee and Robyne Voyce acquired the Crown Lynn New Zealand trading name in 1994. They started using old images of Crown Lynn wares as paintings. They now run the Pug Design Store in Christchurch that has developed a range of Crown Lynn wares including tea towels, cushions and cards depicting the company's most famous products.

The last set of slipware ramekins has that 60's/70's look, giving them style as well as practicality. They are made from a mustard glazed ceramic and feature a stylized floral relief design around the outsides. The bases of all 4 are stamped '1187 MADE IN NEW ZEALAND'. They are in very good condition. No chips or cracks visible. Each ramekin is 6cm tall, with a top opening diameter of 10.2cm, with 5cm handles.

Want to know more? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crown_Lynn

Pettit

Coles-Pettit Pottery

Pettit Pub Group

Wheel thrown ceramic ramekins with a styalized leaf pattern handles. Flat unglazed base inscribed "Pettit". Looks like they were made in the late 1930s. Plain light blue exterior glaze with plain white interior glaze. There are no chips, cracks or crazing. 

Pettit began in the early 1870s with John Cole as the Cole Pottery in White Hart Lane Walthamstow, a district of northeast London England.  Later moving to Folly Lane, Highham Hill, Walthamstow.  John’s son Edward took over in the 1880s and three of his other four  sons also worked in the pottery trade.  Eventually employing 9 men, the business had to shut down for a year because of a strike and the neighbouring pottery “Sankeys” undercutting Coles prices.  Sankey later moved to Nottingham, giving Coles a new opportunity.

The Pettits were related by Marriage to the Coles.  Mary Colley, who married John Cole, was the sister of Ann Colley, who married William Henry Pettit (son of Henry Pettit and Mary).  Both the Cole and the Pettit families lived and worked on site at the potteries in Green Lanes, Tottenham (the Tile Kilns).  Where William went after he left the Tile Kilns is unclear.  Anecdotal evidence suggests that he went to set up the Pettit Potteries in Walthamstow, but this was not immediately the case, as the 1871 census for Walthamstow shows that it was John Cole who, although no longer at the Tile Kilns and not yet at White Hart Lane, was actually at Walthamstow.

He was listed as a pottery proprietor (flower pots) and living with his family at Cambrian Cottages, Walthamstow. George Pettit, William’s son, was listed as a potter, living with his wife Julia and daughters Clara and Annie at 3 Cambrian Cottages, Walthamstow, next but one to John.  William Pettit did appear 10 years later in the 1881 census as a potter with a new wife Louisa and living in the Cambrian Cottages block at number 6.

So it was John Cole rather than William or George Pettit who started the potteries at Higham Hill, Walthamstow. However, John vacated them shortly afterwards for White Hart Lane, whereupon ownership was taken over by the Pettits. Whether or not this was always the intention, it is impossible to say.

According to a newspaper cutting in the Vestry Museum at Walthamstow, the pottery started in 1868 and closed in 1943 during World War II because it couldn't get the coal to power the kilns. Both the date and the reason are open to question, as London potteries generally ceased production earlier in the war so that the lights from the kilns would not signal positions to enemy bombers. Sales continued from stocks.

These ramekins are not very well made or glazed.  Just how they came to Australia is a mystery, although many Pettits migrated.  As I only have two of them, the standard theory applies; someone, probably an English migrant fell off the perch and their stuff found its way to the op-shop, where I found them.   There is no record of Pettit exporting their products.

Poole

Have I departed from my policy of Australian art ramekins only and included that famous English pottery? I don't think so. Not even close. Poole's was a short lived pottery, starting up around 1957 in Park Road Cheltenham, Victoria. These ramekins are of differing sizes but same shape. Slip cast with harlequin interiors. Well made, but the stirrup marks let them down. The signature "Poole" is incised, but is not clear on most pieces. These pieces have external crazing consistent with age.