Crown Lynn: Crockery of Distinction

AN INTRODUCTION
This booklet serves as an interpretive
guide to the exhibition Crown Lynn:
Crockery of Distinction, which is split
across City Gallery’s East and West
Galleries. It contains a brief essay
dedicated to each of the showcased
collections, a general timeline, and
maps to the two gallery spaces. From
large institutions like the Portage
Ceramics Trust to the hoardings of
small private collectors, each of these
collections focuses on a specific
product, process, maker or story
connected to Crown Lynn. These may
be navigated separately and taken
on their own terms, but addressed
collectively they demonstrate Crown
Lynn’s unique contribution to New
Zealand society, culture and design.
At the heart of this exhibition is the
Richard Quinn collection, administered
by the Portage Ceramics Trust. This
significant collection was amassed via
purchase, auction, and through Quinn’s
intriguing archaeological exploration
of the factory site, pits and dumps
following its demolition in 1989.
Quinn created a ‘magpie collection’,
light on many of Crown Lynn’s
crowning glories, but rich in other areas
including industrial objects, production
equipment, archival materials, models
and test pieces.
It’s a collection that resonates with our
exhibition’s drive to re-present Crown
Lynn from a contemporary perspective,
to follow some of the myriad lines of
fascination Crown Lynn holds over
twenty years after its closure. The
Richard Quinn collection runs down
the long wall-bound shelves in both
galleries, and is used to convey a potted
history of the company’s output. Like
the exhibition itself, this chronology
does not attempt to be authoritative
or complete, instead offering a single
take on this shared history. The story of
Crown Lynn and its remarkable range of
products defies easy categorisation.
Twelve additional collections are
displayed, loosely integrated within the
chronological structure. In every case
these objects offer an edited sample
from a larger collection, and often speak
to decades of commited collecting.
The exhibition has brought together
collectors who bring a particular and at
times obsessive focus on an aspect of
Crown Lynn. It’s a reminder that there
are many different Crown Lynns to many
different people; this aspect at least
partially accounts for the company’s
exceptional hold on the cultural
imagination.
This exhibition takes its cue from the
collectors we have been in constant
contact with. Crown Lynn collectors are
a special breed, driven by an acquisitive
impulse and often with a deeply felt
commitment to Crown Lynn and its
stories.
In some cases this impulse is focused
on achieving completeness, towards
owning every item of a particular type
or by a particular artist. But in many
instances it is idiosyncratic, highly
personal and wonderfully wayward,
forgoing comprehensiveness to chase
oddities, to be speculative, and cut
one’s own path through Crown Lynn’s
considerable catalogue. To us, this
strategy operates more comfortably
as a way to consider Crown Lynn’s
situation in the contemporary moment
than that of the museum or the
historian attempting to definitively label
and control. We have drawn not only
on the collections, but also the spirit of
these collectors, to re-present Crown
Lynn for a twenty-first century audience.
FIGURINES
Collector: Helen Slater
To walk into Helen Slater’s Crown Lynn
room is to enter a densely packed
gallery of objects, many of which are
now retired from active service, yet once
played a lively role in the daily domestic
affairs of private homes or institutions.
Others are purely ornamental, the
decorative ware that formed a
significant portion of Crown Lynn’s
output. Among the latter are the animal
figurines, a series of small ceramic
animals modelled with varying degrees
of refinement according to their maker’s
skill. While their production was never
fully systematised, these often humble
objects include some of the most
compelling among Crown Lynn’s yield.
Figurines are ardently collected by
many contemporary collectors, and the
challenge of identifying and confirming
the disputed provenance of individual
pieces makes this a particularly
exhilarating pursuit. A crudely finished
red pig, a stodgily moulded green
rabbit, a pair of lions; figures such as
these from Slater’s collection once
colonised the shelves and mantles
of many homes, often outliving their
contemporary object counterparts such
as jugs, vases and cups due to their
comparative sturdiness and solidity.
Slater has actively collected Crown
Lynn since 1985 (her late husband Basil
was also a major collector of ceramics),
and the figurines form a key part of a
joint collection that continues to expand.
For Slater, the figurines’ interest lies in
their endless variety.
The animal figurines were produced
by Ambrico (later renamed Crown
Lynn) from the 1940s. Early unmarked
examples included the pig, kiwi,
elephant, bulldog and terrier, as well
as a range of animal egg cups. Trickleglazed swans and other figurines
appear from this period. David Jenkin
(designer of the swans, and later
head of the design department) was
influential in developing this decorative
technique after his employment by
Crown Lynn in 1945. Many of the early
figures feature such experimental
glazes, and one-offs are common.
Aside from the popular kiwi, the range
includes few native animals; instead
these are the animals one might find
in English picture books of the period,
or early Disney animations, rather than
in our bush or coastal land. A green
Mickey Mouse jug is one of several of
the American character forms, while
during the 1950s and 1960s various
Bambi figures, comic dogs, horses and
birds appeared. Today, the stylised fawn
is highly sought after. Often these later
pieces include scenery ‘props’ such as
logs, or perches; with a few exceptions
they are demurely posed and freestanding: unfussy, unsophisticated
ornaments to be gifted or collected.
WHARETANA
Collector: Brian Ronson
Brian Ronson has two collections in
Crown Lynn: Crockery of Distinction,
sampled from a larger collection that
speaks to the breadth and diversity of
the company’s production, and also
to the links and connections that can
be made across these objects. While
Crown Lynn hand-potted whiteware
and artist-painted coloured ware dot
the downstairs living areas of Ronson’s
Auckland house, upstairs in a room
filled with cases and objects sits a
cabinet loaded with the grinning moko
head bookends and tiki salt and pepper
shakers of the Wharetana range. This
cabinet of curiosity setting provides
an apt context for one of the most
intriguing and troubling of Crown Lynn
lines.
Wharetana was Crown Lynn’s effort
to enter the tourist souvenir market
in the late 1940s through a range
that promised authentic ‘Maori art
pottery’, and often came with a sticker
explaining the origins and meanings of
particular carving styles and motifs. In
a technical sense, Wharetana offered
Crown Lynn designers significant
scope for innovation. The range was
predominately decorated in two colours,
a gloss brown and green. Modeller
Harry Hargreaves developed an etching
technique to imitate the effects of
carving, incising geometric designs into
the hard clay models that provided the
moulds used in Wharetana’s production.
Ronson’s collection is attuned to
these technical developments. His
collection includes a waka made by
Titian Potteries, widely regarded as the
‘source’ for Crown Lynn’s version, one
of which is also in Ronson’s possession.
He also has a reclining tiki bookend
with the signature H. Hargreaves and
date 20/9/50 incised on its base, an
unusual flourish he thinks may signal
that the object was the first of its line.
While it is easy to admire Wharetana’s
range of decorative and colouristic
effects, its invitation to stub a cigarette
into the doorway of a whare whakairo
or inside the mouth of a tiki figure is
far more problematic to contemporary
sensibilities. Crown Lynn’s desire to
appeal to a tourist market led to the
exploitation of Mäori art and culture.
Such claims of cultural appropriation
and insensitivity are also often leveled
at the high art practices of a figure like
Charles F. Goldie, whose paintings have
been accused of presenting Mäori as a
dying race. If the connection between
tourist ware and history painting seems
tenuous consider one of the rarest
objects in Brian Ronson’s collection:
a test piece made in the Crown Lynn
factory that copies a portion of Goldie
and Louis J. Steele’s painting The Arrival
of the Maori in New Zealand (1898).
Rejected by management and never put
into production, the plate left the Crown
Lynn factory under the arm of a worker
before entering Ronson’s collection.
TRICKLE-GLAZE
Collector: Jeff Elston
The term colourist is most often applied
to artists, but equally characterises
Jeff Elston as a collector. He traces a
collecting impulse back to when he
was five or six years old, scavenging
items at the Timaru tip to earn pocket
money. He became fascinated with bits
of coloured glass and soon amassed a
significant collection. It was a short step
to collecting coloured pottery. Elston
first collected South Island pottery:
Temuka, Timaru Potteries, Milton and
Luke Adams. Colour remained the
primary driver in Elston’s collecting.
He soon found some pottery from an
Auckland manufacturer called Ambrico
that seemed to push the mottled
colours of his beloved Temuka pottery
into interesting new shapes.
Four decades later, Elston has the
largest holding of trickle-glaze, and
estimates his collection contains around
sixty percent of everything Ambrico
(later renamed Crown Lynn) produced
in this line. The trickleware, in turn,
represents just a portion of Elston’s
mammoth collection.
Trickle-glaze was an experimental
decorative technique developed by
designer David Jenkin as Ambrico
strove to meet the increased domestic
ware needs of wartime New Zealand.
An object was coated with a thick
base glaze, and then had another
one or multiple colours trickled over
its surface, creating a rich, mottled
effect. This process was applied to all
of Ambrico’s slipcast products from
ornamental vases of all shapes and
sizes to tiny figurines.
Normally celebrated as the result
of artistic experimentation, Elston
insists that the process was driven
by economic necessity, and was
essentially a cheap and effective
technique to mask Ambrico’s copying
of English ceramics. This English-made
ware was muted in colour, and the
dramatic trickle-glaze effects seemingly
created a unique product. To Elston
such knowledge does not lessen the
significance of these objects. In fact,
to him trickle-glaze represents the great
resourcefulness and experimentation
of Ambrico at this time.
In the end, it is colour that continues
to attract Elston to trickleware. This
display contains a selection from
the colour range he calls ‘strawberry
ice cream’, a rich mixing of various
shades of brown, cranberry, gold and
magenta. Strawberry ice cream is the
second most rare and valuable of the
trickleware colours. Brown and green
are the most common colours, while
blue is the rarest and most valuable due
to it use of cobalt. Elston has significant
collections of all, but is most fond of
strawberry ice cream with its mixture
of rich, lustrous colours. His expert
eye can detect a huge variety amongst
the strawberry ice cream family. He
identifies three stages of specialisation
or experimentation within the range,
which he is able to confirm through the
incised fractional marks on the base
of each object which record the type
of glaze each was subjected to. For
someone primarily drawn to objects via
something as instinctual and immediate
as colour, Jeff Elston has developed a
vast understanding and knowledge of
the endlessly fascinating trickleware.
MIREK SMISEK
Collector: Juliet Collins
Juliet Collins remembers her first sight
of a Mirek Smisek pot in a Market
Road shop window as falling in love.
At that time she already had a general
collection of Crown Lynn ceramics,
mostly slipcast and a few Ernest
Shufflebotham pieces. Trained as a
printmaker, Collins was immediately
drawn to hand-potted ware for its
substance, form and tactility, while
the etched lines of Smisek’s sgraffito
technique and the slightly gritty
surface of the brown matt glaze were
particularly appealing. Collins has now
been collecting for some thirteen years,
and has amassed a major collection of
Smisek’s Bohemia Ware range, from
which these thirty vases are selected.
She lives with these objects informally
integrated among a collection of
contemporary New Zealand art and
other hand thrown ceramics, enjoying
the way they interact with the plain
modernist furniture and neutral walls of
her home, and the changing light across
their warm brown surfaces.
On the base of each of these uniform
dimension pots is an italic hand-written
backstamp, ‘Bohemia Hand Made’, used
in several variations by Smisek from
1950 to 1952. The Czechoslovakian
born potter named the range for his
birthplace, from which he migrated
after the war to Australia, where he
learned ceramic design at East Sydney
Technical College. He then moved to
New Zealand and was briefly employed
by Crown Lynn in the clay preparation
department, where he became assistant
to designer Ernest Shufflebotham, and
later a designer and thrower.
This was a boom era for the company,
and Director Tom Clark sought
international designers to expand from
mass produced moulded ranges into
modern art ceramics. While Crown Lynn
was often disparaged by modernist
critics as being derivative of British
ceramic design and ‘rose bud china’,
Smisek was one among several active
designers who produced lines of their
own during this period.
The Bohemia Ware range was thrown
by Shufflebotham and decorated by
Smisek. The pale bodied vases were
covered with a deep brown glaze,
into which Smisek inscribed the lean
wayward lines which characterise
his work with an etching tool. Almost
identical in form at approximately
130mm high, the vases each have a
unique surface decoration, exposing the
bone-white body beneath with varied
composition of negative and positive
spaces. Shoulder to shoulder along
a single horizon display shelf, they
come alive as a form of drawing, with
the dynamic line running from piece
to piece. While Smisek’s time with the
company was ultimately short-lived,
Bohemia Ware was positively received
by audiences, and continues to strike
a strong chord with contemporary
collectors.
ERNEST SHUFFLEBOTHAM, KEITH MURRAY, JOHN PARKER
Collector: John Parker
John Parker’s collection of Ernest
Shufflebotham and Keith Murray’s
whiteware is the collection of a
practising artist. That is, it exists in a
clear and active dialogue with Parker’s
own ceramic works, which since 1996
share a monochromatic focus and a
formal precision resembling commercial
ware. Three artists’ works are displayed
here: Shufflebotham’s whiteware vases,
and bowls by Murray, Shufflebotham
and Parker respectively. In addition to
these, Parker has created three new
works for the Crown Lynn: Crockery of
Distinction exhibition, continuing and
extending the narrative relationship
which has played such a significant role
in his recent practice.
Parker is one of New Zealand’s
foremost mid-career ceramic artists.
Since the 1990s he has been fascinated
by industrial processes to do with
the potter’s wheel, and continues to
interrogate the crossover between
handmade and commercial ceramics.
English potter Murray, a designer
working at Josiah Wedgewood and
Sons Ltd, England in the 1930s, and
Shufflebotham, a protégé of Murray’s
who was engaged at Crown Lynn in the
1940s and 1950s, were immediately of
interest. Across the three artists’ works
formal simplicity and a prescribed,
minimalist palette is approached as
a complete language. Through the
collection we see this quality exploited
to its full potential; a composition
in white is achieved, where form,
sculptural concerns and inflections of
surface become a kind of performance.
Shufflebotham’s time at Crown Lynn
(1948–1955) coincided with the final
perfection of a soft matt white glaze,
from a formula based on Matauri
sourced clay, which consistently burned
white and which was able to be fired
in a new Prouty kiln at the factory from
1948. Shortly after the professional
turner’s arrival, the factory’s throwers
and turners were separated to form
the ‘Specials Department’. Each piece
was thrown then hand-turned on a
lathe, a process involving two people,
and an expert turner, Jack Aberly, was
employed to assist Shufflebotham.
Shufflebotham continued to design
interpretations of Murray’s ‘machined’
style domestic ware, catering to an
expanding market for hand-thrown
vases and refined ornamental ware.
The burgeoning popularity of whiteware
also saw moulded ranges produced
during this period; Shufflebotham’s
hand-thrown pieces are distinguishable
by their interior finish, deep base and
surface patina.
In 2002 a major retrospective, John
Parker: Ceramics, was exhibited at
City Gallery Wellington. Since this time
Parker has sustained the engagement
with white across a range of bowls,
vases, orbs and cylinders. The surface
treatment has varied significantly,
ranging from smooth luminous matt
white to striated and craterous hand
basin enamel. Recent Crown Lynn
related projects include an installation
piece, Waitakere Still Life for Keith and
Ernie, which won the 2009 Portage
Ceramics Award, and a major public
wall based artwork for the New Lynn
Transport Interchange, which features a
series of Crown Lynn swans made from
tiles. The whiteware project continues.
EAST GALLERY
The Richard Quinn Collection
A tide of workers floods from the Crown
Lynn factory doors at the end of the
day; some are conversing, breathing in
the fresh air; others are simply focused
on getting home. The Richard Quinn
Collection begins with this image of the
people who sat at benches modelling,
decorating, attaching handles on the
factory floor: the people behind a
company that over some fifty years
of operation grew from a family
business to play a vital role in New
Zealand’s industrial and cultural history.
Subsequent images depict showroom
displays and an array of Crown Lynn
items, and, surrounded by boxes of
crockery, Tom Clark, the man who
started it all.
This section includes a range of objects
that establish Crown Lynn as a place of
production. Bisque ware, moulds, ram
presses, colour trials, a decorating
stand and a selection of stamps for
hand labelling are among the objects
that relate to manual endeavour. Early
utility items represent the company’s
humble beginnings, when it was trading
as Ambrico. In the late 1930s the first
domestic ware was produced, developing
from handleless beaker to straight sided
cup with block handle, to the straw
coloured Paris Ware (the first dinner
ware made by Ambrico, around 1943).
Wartime economic conditions spurred
mass production techniques and
technologies. Ambrico, now deemed
‘an essential industry’, serviced a local
market bereft of imported goods.
Designer David Jenkin joined the factory
in 1945, heading the design section
and developing the trickle-glazing
decorative method that was applied to
many ornamental pieces, small vases
and animal figurines of the period.
WEST GALLERY
The Richard Quinn Collection
A bulk production order saw Crown
Lynn provide the almost 300,000 sturdy,
super vitrified cups, saucers and plates
required by New Zealand Railways
each year. Other monogrammed ware
for different institutions formed a
significant part of the company’s output.
Ernest Shufflebotham’s employment
at Crown Lynn (1948–1955), and
the achievement of a white glazing
technique, saw whiteware’s ascent to
fashion. Not only Shufflebotham’s handpotted pieces, but thousands of mass
produced objects were made from the
late 1940s to the 1970s and glazed
with the same matt white finish. By
1963 there was a range of 100 different
shapes in production. The ubiquitous
swan vase, designed by Jenkin, was
produced by Crown Lynn from the late
1940s to the 1970s.
Through the 1950s and 1960s Crown
Lynn produced a remarkable variety
of products, from conservative floral
patterned china to whiteware, to the
souvenir Wharetana range. The arrival of
key émigré artists Frank Carpay, Daniel
Steenstra and Mirek Smisek during
the 1950s signalled the company’s
progressive design values which
weren’t always aligned with public
taste. Commemorative items for the
Queen’s Coronation in 1953 reveal
a parallel direction. Shufflebotham’s
limited edition, two handled whiteware
mug was a cut above the cheaper
slipcast yellow cup holding a portrait
of the Queen. Frank Carpay’s design
(not included here) never made it past
the prototype. His eroticised portrayal
of the Queen with exposed breast was
deemed inappropriate and out of line with
the taste of the local market. Carpay was
let go by Crown Lynn in 1956.
The 1960s was a period of expansion
for Crown Lynn, in terms of
consolidating its hold on the local
market, pushing into the export one,
and in developing new products and
lines. While conservative dinner ware
like Green Bamboo and Autumn
Splendor remained top sellers, a raft
of boldly coloured and patterned forms
suggested an exciting era of new
possibilities. The predominance of
highly patterned or later earthy-toned
and honey-glazed coffee cans and
mugs may imply that the drinking habits
of New Zealanders were changing. But
Crown Lynn’s staple china tea cup and
saucer set did not disappear, and in
some cases were made over in modern
styles and forms. However not all of
these designs were embraced. The
wide rimmed cup from the Dorothy
Thorpe range appeared on the New
Zealand market without its elaborate
but totally impractical ball handle.
Design qualities improved steadily
through this period, aided by new
technologies and processes. The
textured granule technique responsible
for the sprinkled glaze effect on the
Pine pattern was developed by David
Jenkin for Dorothy Thorpe designed
shapes. With modeller Tam Mitchell,
Jenkin also developed the sleek
straight sided Shape Twenty-5 range,
represented in this display by the sage
green Nouvelle coffee set.
The Nouvelle pattern was submitted by
Peter Gibb to the Crown Lynn design
competition in 1967. This annual
competition received hundreds of
submitted designs for dinner ware
patterns, ranging from polite florals
to ultra-modern abstractions. Fifty
years later, many of these entries
remain in the archive of the Portage
Ceramics Trust where they constitute
an alternative Crown Lynn, or a Crown
Lynn of the imagination. A few designs,
like Nouvelle (or Nirvana in the East
Gallery), were manufactured, often
taking different form to accommodate
the demands of mass production.
Mark Cleverley, a three time winner
of the award, subsequently joined the
Crown Lynn design department. Working
closely with Jenkin, he played a key role
in the development of both the earth–
toned ranges and the bright Forma
dinner ware of the 1970s. Cleverley
and Jenkin worked on Crown Lynn’s
major commissions of the late 1960s
and 1970s, including the rebranding of
Air New Zealand’s dinner ware with a
new stackable range of plates and cups
suitable for airborne service, and the
Expo70 range, with its fishhook design
chopstick holders offering an intriguing
fusion of cultural forms.
The energy and innovation of Crown
Lynn’s 1970s output did not flow into
the next decade. Worsening economic
conditions and market reforms seem to
have hung heavily over the company’s
vision and output. Quality products
such as the black and white speckled
Nouveau range and the three piece
children’s locomotive set stand out
amongst a raft of largely forgettable
new products. This display concludes
with a photograph and bisque models
for the Provincale range, whose
production was halted by the closure
of the factory in 1989. Frozen forever
between idea and execution, these
ghostly white forms symbolise the
uneasy end of Crown Lynn, while
providing a trace presence of what
could have been.
1929: Amalgamated Brick and Pipe
Company established, a merger of
several potteries in Auckland and
Wellington, including the Clark family
brick and pipe business (managed
by Thomas Edwin Clark Senior).
Production centralised at New Lynn
in Auckland.
1931: Tom Clark Junior joins the
business, initially digging in the clay
pits. Depression economy sees the
company’s workforce shrink from 250
to just 8.
1939: A purpose built factory with
its own kiln erected alongside the
Brick and Pipe works; the enterprise
becomes the Porcelain Specialties
Department. Onset of war and import
restrictions sees a vast new crockery
market open up: the ‘Specials
Department’ is declared an essential
industry.
1940: A filter press (to drain water
from the clay) acquired from Chelsea
Sugar Refinery, and two mills from
an abandoned Thames gold mining
site restored for use at the New Lynn
factory. New Zealand Railways places
an order for the supply of mugs
previously imported from British firms
(by 1943 block handles are added).
Decorators Doris Bird and Mary Baillie
arrive from England.
1941: Oil fired continuous tunnel kiln
built and goes into operation on factory
ground floor.
1947: Tom Clark travels to England
to visit potteries including Royal
Grafton, recruiting staff and studying
processes.
1941/42: Production of vitrified mugs
and cereal bowls for American armed
forces stationed in the Pacific.
1943: A new factory built, housing an
automatic hot press stamping machine.
This enables production of the first 36
piece dinner set, Paris design. 15,000
pieces each day produced: mass
production begins. Backstamps are
introduced.
1945: Artist David Jenkin arrives from
Elam School of Art. Under his influence
trickle-glaze experimentation and
production of vases decorated using
this method begins. A fire leaves the
factory laboratory badly impaired.
1946: Production is at 100,000 pieces
a week. Acronym ‘Ambrico’
(Amalgamated Brick and Pipe
Company) used. Straw coloured glaze
of tableware lines. Gold, lustre and
monogram printing begins.
1948: Crown Lynn name used for the
first time. Arrival of designer Ernest
Shufflebotham from England coincides
with the perfection of a matt white
glaze. A range of mass produced
whiteware is released alongside
Shufflebotham’s hand-potted ware.
The first white swans are also made
at this time (these continue selling
through to the 1970s). Prime Minister
Peter Fraser raises the value of the
New Zealand pound, making exports
difficult. Staff drops from 300 to 100.
1949/50: Wharetana released,
originals modelled by Harry Hargreaves.
Design department is set up under
David Jenkin.
1950: Mirek Smisek’s Bohemia Ware
range produced (until 1952).
1953: Frank Carpay’s Handwerk
series produced (until 1956). Queen’s
Coronation commemorative mugs
released. Daniel Steenstra arrives from
Holland, and begins working as
a thrower.
1955: Pseudo-British imprints are
used on many lines through the mid1950s, including Fancy Fayre, Ascot
and Kelston Ware British, in an effort
to compete with the English ware
increasingly available on the market as
wartime restrictions ease.
1956: A major fire at the factory
destroys many one-off pieces from
early production days, and significantly
damages the building.
1958: Reintroduction of import
licensing, and a ‘Buy New Zealand
Made’ campaign sees a boost in
production; in twelve months output
doubles and the number of designs
quadruples. By 1959 Crown Lynn is
supplying 40% of the domestic market
for tableware.
1959: Otway Josling’s ‘Reflections’
wins first prize in the inaugural
Crown Lynn Design Competition.
This annual competition will run until
the early 1980s.
1959/60: First Murray Curvex machine
installed. Single colour designs printed
directly onto dinner ware.
1960: Keith Holyoake’s National
Government comes to power, promising
increased tariffs on imported goods
and stricter import controls. Holyoake
visits the factory as part of his election
campaign, and Tom Clark officially
addresses the new tariff board.
Early 1960s: Crown Lynn introduces
a replacement policy, guaranteeing
the availability of replacements for
broken pieces covering five ranges
over a five year period. Outlets set up
in Fiji, Samoa, American Samoa, Tahiti,
Noumea, New Guinea and the Cook
Islands.
1961: Crown Lynn begins new
cadetship scheme, sponsoring cadets
through a ceramics degree course at
Stoke-on-Trent, England. Overseas
Trade Minister Jack Marshall stamps
the word ‘export’ on the first case of
dinner ware destined for the export
market, signalling a move into overseas
markets. Crown Lynn begins its famous
factory tours.
1963: Queen Elizabeth II visits the
factory, but shows little interest in
an urn made to commemorate the
occasion. Straight sided ‘coffee can’,
forerunner of the coffee mug, released.
Crown Lynn presents Prime Minister
Keith Holyoake a 204 piece dinner
service for the newly opened New
Zealand House in London.
1965: The Dorothy Thorpe range sold
in Canada, Crown Lynn’s first foray into
the North American market. Crown Lynn
supplies a lightweight range of vitrified
dinner ware to Air New Zealand for use
on new DC8 jet airliners.
1966: 20,000 people visit Crown Lynn
on factory tours. Numbers are cut due
to the strain on factory guides.
1966/67: Crown Lynn’s exports double,
thanks to success in the Australian and
Canadian markets.
1968: Mark Cleverley hired as Crown
Lynn ‘Development Designer’.
1968: Crown Lynn takes over its main
competitor, Titian Potteries, shifting
some of its production to Titian’s
Henderson factory.
1968: Crown Lynn buys Royal Grafton
factory in Stoke-on-Trent and starts
producing fine bone china.
1969: ‘Hippies influence latest dinner
ware’ — the Echo and Ponui designs
released.
1969: A new fluted Apollo dinner
ware range named after the Apollo 11
spacecraft.
1969: The Trade Promotion Council
presents Crown Lynn with an award
for outstanding effort in the export
field. A gold embossed plaque
decorated with native flora and fauna
is made to commemorate this award.
1969: Ceramic House in New Lynn
opens.
1970: Crown Lynn commissioned by
the New Zealand Meat Board to make
dinner ware for its restaurant at Expo70
in Osaka, Japan.
1973: The Forma range of modern
dinner ware released. A joint venture
set up in the Philippines called Mayon
Ceramics. Dinner ware for Air New
Zealand redesigned in a stackable
range with a koru on brown glaze
decoration. A new ram press allows
objects previously slipcast to be
machine produced. A ‘smokeless
incinerator’ installed, reducing its
factory emissions in line with
new environmental concerns.
1977: A new gas-fire kiln allows for
in-glaze decoration, first applied to
the textured Earthstone range.
Bellamy’s dinner ware commissioned
by the Government as part of a
refurbishment of the Beehive.
1979: Ceramco celebrates 50 years
of operation with a hexagonal trinket
box carrying scenes from the company’s
past.
1984: Finance Minister Roger Douglas
introduces economic reforms, lifting
import restrictions and opening up the
market to foreign investors, essentially
removing the policies which have
protected Crown Lynn since the 1960s.
1984: Tom Clark retires as Managing
Director.
1989: Crown Lynn ceases operation,
and the factory is destroyed.
COLOURGLAZE
Collector: Alison Reid
Perhaps the quintessential image
many people have of Crown Lynn is
Colourglaze ware, closely followed by
the swan vase. The brightly coloured
tulip-shaped teacups and saucers that
feature on many op-shop shelves and
in cupboards across the country have
come to represent for many people
a ubiquitous Crown Lynn object:
serviceable, straightforward design,
widely available, and more recently,
highly collectible and popular with
audiences for kitsch and retro-chic. No
self-respecting vintage store is without
the candy coloured teacups, which,
despite their reputation for selling
second hand for a song, in recent years
continue to steadily climb in value.
many others), using many pieces every
day for eating, drinking and entertaining.
While mostly primrose yellow pieces
(the first colour collected by Reid)
are displayed here, she collects sets
in olive green, teal, plum, pink and
blue and black, as well as fostering a
growing collection which she fondly
terms ‘lollyware’—a mixture of pieces
spanning the full Colourglaze spectrum
of shades.
Alison Reid became intrigued with the
Colourglaze range while touring small
town New Zealand with the Auckland
Theatre Company in the 1990s. In
community theatres and halls (and
second hand shops during her down
time) she repeatedly encountered
cupboards literally stacked with the
characteristically rainbowed tulip cups
and saucers.
The Colourglaze range came in some
eighteen different colours, including
the deliciously named Oyster, Clover,
Pumpkin, Rusticana, Jade, Tropic, Duck
Egg, Ant Green, Coral, Mushroom,
Cocoa, Citrus and Honey. The range
was designed by Crown Lynn to be
mixed and matched across different
colour sets. The different coloured
underglazes were all covered with a
high quality and hard-wearing clear
glaze, producing these durable and
recognisable pieces. Originally released
in the 1960s, it was sold with Capri and
South Pacific backstamps as well as
Colourglaze and Caribbean Ware.
Returning to Auckland, she rapidly
acquired a number of the Colourglaze
pieces herself, establishing a collection
which she sees as an echo of, or tribute
to those many hidden hoardings in the
halls and theatres she visited. Reid
has since retired from the theatre and
runs her own Crown Lynn and Vintage
shop, Aunty Mavis, in St Kevin’s Arcade,
Auckland. Reid’s private collection is
frequently augmented through actively
seeking in flea markets, on TradeMe,
auction sites and through other
contacts. She shares a colourful home
environment with her vividly decorative
collections (the Colourglaze among
Mass produced, the Colourglaze
range appealed to buyers looking for
affordable and attractive domesticware
which would give a sense of occasion
to the everyday. By the late 1960s
Crown Lynn was annually producing
five million pieces of tableware for the
domestic market alone; throughout the
1970s and 1980s the market effortlessly
absorbed functional, smart, replaceable
sets like Colourglaze. Today their
popularity stems from a combination of
nostalgic familiarity, simple practicality,
and a contemporary appetite for a
local design seen to reflect ‘New
Zealandness’: frank, colourful, laid-back.
FRANK CARPAY
Collector: Brian Ronson
Frank Carpay often marked the
base of his works with the cursive
‘Handwerk’ backstamp and a spindly
black hand. These marks testify to
the importance of the hand of the
maker in the creation of these highly
distinctive, hand-painted objects whose
sweeping lines and audacious colour
combinations transform often simple
shapes into animate, highly energised
forms. The hand of the artist is here
met by the discerning eye of collector
Brian Ronson, who over the past thirty
years or so has amassed a significant
collection covering the span of Carpay’s
brief but highly productive three year
tenure at Crown Lynn from 1953. The
Dutch artist famously set himself in ‘a
war against the rosebuds’ referring to
the mass produced dinner ware with
decorative patterns that dominated New
Zealand households and Crown Lynn
production.
Carpay’s arrival at Crown Lynn further
accentuated a divide between the
handmade and the mass produced
that split the factory through this
period. Ronson’s collection is firmly in
one camp. His Carpay collection sits
amongst the work of the other émigré
artists responsible for modernising
Crown Lynn’s output through the 1950s,
testifying to the vitality of that moment.
It includes Ernest Shufflebotham’s
hand-potted ware, Daniel Steenstra’s
painted vases, and examples of Mirek
Smisek’s Bohemia Ware in brown and
rare chrome glazes.
Amongst these riches, the Carpay
collection seems to hold centre stage.
Ronson has focused on the later
part of Carpay’s Crown Lynn output,
as he stopped using pre-existing
lines and developed his own more
elaborate shapes and forms. These
jugs, vases and plaques all carry
Carpay’s distinctive fluid painting style
which almost drapes colour across
the surface while always paying close
attention to the shape and flow of each
object. The dramatic black and white
‘Lips’ and ‘Harlequin’ vases are now
widely acknowledged as high points not
only of Carpay’s output but also of New
Zealand design.
Ronson’s collection includes a vase
that carries a Crown Lynn mark, but no
maker’s one. It is decorated with the
loose painting style, soft colours and
the playfully figurative forms found in
Carpay’s later work. While not claiming
it as the work of Carpay, Ronson is
intrigued with the vase and how it
sits alongside and in relation to these
other objects, all of which attests to
how the process of collecting can be
as exploratory and speculative as the
objects it covets.
DOROTHY THORPE
Collector: Billy Apple
Billy Apple’s arresting collection of
Dorothy Thorpe ceramics is a singular
design statement as much as a
series of individual objects. Apple has
collected the Thorpe range voraciously
over the last decade, since receiving a
ball handled cup and saucer from Brian
Ronson (owner of two other collections
within this exhibition) as a gift. There is
a recognisable affinity between Apple
and Thorpe, two artists who have an
eye for immaculate design that lies
outside of the common order, which
exploits simple forms for their seductive
aesthetic potential and conceptual
possibilities. With a fine disregard for
practicality, the sleek Dorothy Thorpe
design range evokes a different side
of Crown Lynn: here is an outward
looking, cosmopolitan aesthetic which
has symbolic currency in the world of
design as well as utility value, which
brands itself both within and outside of
the commercial realm.
Dorothy Thorpe, a glassware and
ceramic designer from Los Angeles,
was invited to Crown Lynn to create a
special range which would be sold in
the United States and Canada. This was
part of a concerted effort throughout
the 1960s to increase exports of Crown
Lynn tableware (and exports of New
Zealand products more generally);
new overseas markets were vital if
the company was to keep expanding.
The range she delivered featured
an audacious ball shaped handle on
the cups, jugs, sugar bowl lids and
beverage servers, while a more practical
loop handled version was developed for
the domestic and Australian markets.
The Dorothy Thorpe range catalogue
reads ‘Sophisticated Tableware from
New Zealand…’, with the tagline ‘Art in
a Cup’. This was a range for a 1960s
market, attuned to contemporary
fashion and consciously cultivating an
image of urbane chic. Thorpe’s flair
as a colourist is evident in the unique
contrasts and luminosity of these
glazes, unlike anything previously seen
from Crown Lynn.
Technically challenging to execute
and prone to explosions in the firing
process, the ball handles proved a
bone of contention for factory workers
involved in their production. More
interestingly, the range as a whole
emphasises some key differences
between New Zealand and international
audiences of the period. The full
44 piece dinner set included a vast
13” (33.8 cm) platter and salad bowl
measuring 10” (26 cm) in diameter.
New Zealand dinner tables at the time
rarely held the fresh tossed salads
this suggested, while the size of all
the pieces in the range, especially the
wide shouldered cups, were larger than
usual, and less useful at retaining heat.
The range also provides an unusual
example of collaboration between New
Zealand and American design. Thorpe
was responsible for the elaborate
form, as well as four decorations:
Laguna, Monterey, Brocade and Santa
Barbara. Two additional decorations,
Pine and Palm Spring, were designed
by Mark Cleverley and David Jenkins
respectively. After the Thorpe range
was discontinued, dinner sets with Palm
Springs and Pine decoration continued
to sell in New Zealand and Australia.
While it ultimately failed to revolutionise
the export market as Crown Lynn may
have hoped, the Dorothy Thorpe design
range today stands out as a uniquely
striking example of 1960s design and
is avidly collected.
ASUMI MIZUO
Asumi Mizuo first drank from a Crown
Lynn cup as an international student
staying with a host family in New
Zealand. The Tokyo-born artist now
lives and works in Auckland. Her
practice is project-based, often using
found objects and images to activate
lingering material traces of human
presence and activity. Acutely aware of
Crown Lynn’s role in New Zealand life
and culture, Mizuo seeks out discarded,
chipped and broken pieces as a
form of readymade, awaiting artistic
intervention.
To enact this intervention, Mizuo
draws on another cultural tradition,
the Japanese ceramic repair technique
kintsugi, dating from the late 15th
century. Cracks and chips are filled
with a lacquer which is covered in a
fine gold powder, a time consuming
process taking a number of months.
Kintsugi does more than repair broken
pottery. Leaving the mends and seams
visible, the process adds an aesthetic
complexity and beauty to the object that
transforms it into something wondrous
and precious. There are many stories
of intentional breakages leading to
kintsugi repair. Mizuo refuses to break
objects for her project, but seeks out
damaged pieces in second hand shops,
churches and community centres. The
scars and fractures carried by these
plates and cups symbolise the physical,
mental and spiritual states of the people
and cultures that have used them.
Mizuo’s art is a healing and restorative
one, but is also intrinsically perverse.
She predominately uses everyday
Crown Lynn, defiantly devoting huge
amounts of attention and care to
mass produced, factory-line products.
She also links cultural traditions,
connecting elaborate Japanese teadrinking ceremonies with the rather
more down-home local ritual of a
cup of tea and biscuit that has seen
generations of New Zealanders
reach for their Crown Lynn.
Her project taps into a long history
of exchange between Japanese and
New Zealand ceramics, including
Shoji Hamada’s visit to this country
in 1965 which had a major impact on
local studio pottery. At the same time
Crown Lynn attempted unsuccessfully
to push into the Japanese market, and
investigated establishing a factory
there, while whipping up a couple of
‘exotic oriental’ designs. Crown Lynn
wares subsequently represented New
Zealand industry at Expo70 in Osaka.
Mizuo also places herself within the
long tradition of recent migrants
working with Crown Lynn, especially the
émigré European artists of the 1940s
and 1950s, who fought to elevate the
company’s products into an artistic
rather than commercial realm. In many
ways Mizuo reverses this trajectory,
using art and a foreign tradition to
elevate and exoticise those everyday
Crown Lynn products her predecessors
dismissed as limited and derivative.
This is an ongoing project, but one that
Mizuo is finding increasingly difficult to
progress as prices for Crown Lynn rise
and its damaged objects are more likely
to be disposed of than kept.
FIESTA
Collector: Mary Morrison
Crown Lynn made many dinner ware
ranges under the Kelston brand through
the late 1950s and 1960s, of which the
joyous Fiesta is a highlight. Its pattern
of colourful polka dots on a cross
hatched grey and cream background
was part of a new type of dinner ware
for the new hedonistic age. Bright
colours, complex forms, and bold
stripes and patterns broke from the
plain austerity of Crown Lynn’s earlier
dinner ware.
Like much Crown Lynn produced
through this period, the range emulated
and imitated offshore models. Fiesta
was the most popular post-war
American dinner ware range, and
was also produced in Britain by J&G
Meakin and the Johnson Brothers. The
simplicity of the bright polka dot on
plain background pattern lent itself to
easy imitation, especially for a company
like Crown Lynn eager to claim a status
for its wares through association with
other products and makers.
Collector Mary Morrison is attuned to
the economic issues at play in Crown
Lynn through this period, especially the
company’s impact on studio pottery in
New Zealand. Her collection includes
multiple sets of Fiesta, some of which
are used on a daily basis. It also
extends to a rare document sourced
from the Crown Lynn factory which
reveals the final stages of Fiesta’s
transition from lifted international model
to locally made product. This card
template, covered in ceramic dust, hung
on the factory wall. Various sized plates
are outlined on its surface, covered
with marks indicating where the bright
polka dots of the Fiesta range should
be applied.
Fiesta was hand painted, and surviving
photographs of the factory suggest
that the plates would have been painted
by the predominately female staff of
the decoration department who in
the mid-1960s were responsible
for producing 70,000 items a week.
Morrison’s collection provides some
insight into this process, and she
gleefully points out how the decorative
patterns on very few of the plates
actually match the template. There
is something reassuring in these
digressions and in the rogue drips of
paint remaining on the plates, indicating
that despite mass production the hand
of the maker still prevailed.
Morrison’s Fiesta plates are here
displayed in original wire racks, key
to Crown Lynn’s marketing of their
dinner ware as sets. The accompanying
Colourglaze cups have subsequently
been collected by Morrison to echo
the colours on the plates. Combined,
the display reveals the aesthetic and
cultural complexity of these apparently
simple objects.
BELLAMY’S DINNER WARE
Collector: New Zealand Government
The commission of a unique range of
dinner ware for Bellamy’s restaurant
in the newly built Beehive in 1977
cemented a lengthy relationship
between the New Zealand government
and Crown Lynn. The fledging industrial
manufacturer had begun producing
tableware in 1940, following an
approach from the Department of
Industries and Commerce determined
to ensure the economic welfare of the
country by lessening its dependence
on imported goods. Subsequent import
restrictions and other protectionist
policies allowed Crown Lynn to flourish
in and dominate the local market. By
the time of the Bellamy’s commission,
Crown Lynn was not only in most New
Zealand homes. It also served the
armed forces, the railways, Air New
Zealand, and had provided dinner ware
for the New Zealand Meat Board’s
restaurant at Expo70 in Osaka, Japan.
Bellamy’s dinner ware was part of a
revamp of parliamentary buildings that
presented an image of New Zealand
as an independent, modern nation.
The restaurant’s formal gold and
white dinner ware did not suit the new
Beehive building, with its native timber
floors and heavy weave carpets that
emphasised the use of local materials
and designs. Crown Lynn offered the
logical choice to provide this dinner
ware. Its designers Mark Cleverley and
David Jenkin had developed a range
of earthy and organic Crown Lynn
wares that nodded both towards the
growing interest in studio pottery and a
new modern age. Both also shared an
interest in the use of Mäori and Pacific
forms and symbols with the Beehive
designers. A platter made for the New
Zealand pavilion in Expo70 carried a
symbolic retelling of Maui’s capturing
of the sun, set amidst an abstracted
background evocative of palisades and
bubbling mud pools.
Despite this apparent convergence,
Crown Lynn’s first proposal for the
Bellamy’s range (a leaf motif on a white
glaze) was rejected by a parliamentary
subcommittee. After visiting the
Beehive, Mark Cleverley developed
the distinctive design of an abstracted
fishhook on a Rusticana earthernware
glaze. The fishhook motif, a further
distillation of the imagery on the
Expo70 platter, was outlined either with
a single black or an incised gray line.
Crown Lynn’s Bellamy’s range may
now feel like a period piece, akin to
the brown and beige suits and cream
shirts worn by the waiters after the
relaunch of the restaurant. Yet it
shares an ambition and vision of New
Zealand as a modern Pacific nation
with other Beehive commissions: John
Drawbridge’s mural, and the Guy Ngandesigned, Joan Calvert-produced wall
hanging that welcomed guests in the
entrance foyer.
If Crown Lynn’s Bellamy’s range spoke
to and for a particular moment, it was
a fleeting one. A subsequent change
in Government saw Bellamy’s return
to fine dining and the use of imported
Japanese china. In many ways this shift
was symbolic of broader economic
shifts of the period, which led to rising
inflation, a removal of the protection
offered to local industries, and,
ultimately, the closure of Crown Lynn
in 1989. Never released on the open
market, Crown Lynn’s Bellamy’s dinner
ware found its way into the public realm
through parliamentary staff taking or
being gifted items.
THE CLARK COLLECTION
The nine children in the Clark family
ate off Crown Lynn plates every day of
their early lives. From Peter Rabbit baby
plates to Dorothy Thorpe, new dinner
sets were welcomed with excitement,
and judgements passed. Affairs on the
factory floor and the export economy
were commonplace conversation at the
family dinner table; some of the children
worked in the factory during the school
holidays. Over five decades, Sir Tom
Clark, founder of Crown Lynn, had
transformed the market for domestic
ceramics in New Zealand; table settings
looked distinctly different from those
he’d grown up with. His own table was
necessarily well stocked with crockery,
straightforward robust ranges designed
to withstand the wear and tear of a
boisterous growing family.
Twenty two years on from the Crown
Lynn factory’s closure in 1989, and
six since its founder’s passing, items
that remain in the family’s households
reveal not so much a collection but a
story about why certain objects are
cherished, and the anecdotes they
contain.
Although Clark’s full archival collection
was destroyed in the Crown Lynn fire
of 1967, all the pieces displayed here
speak of the entwinement of family and
company histories. Clark had learnt
much about kilns and glazes from hours
spent with his aunt and studio potter
pioneer, Briar Gardner. In the early days
of Crown Lynn he slept next to the kiln
to keep the temperatures up through
the night. The enterprise was in every
way a bold undertaking, funded by a
£5000 grant from his father, Tom Clark
Senior, the head of Amalgamated Brick
and Pipe Co. Ltd.
The gilded Royal dinner set was
designed as a gift for Queen Elizabeth
II on the occasion of her Coronation
visit in 1953. It is one of two produced:
one set was created for the Queen, the
other Clark brought proudly home for
his mother. Ten years later the Queen
returned, accompanied by the Duke
of Edinburgh, to visit the Crown Lynn
factory itself. They met with Clark and
Deputy Prime Minister Marshall, then
with directors and others from the
company, and inspected a range of
wares in the display room.
By this time the factory was supplying
up to 50% of New Zealand’s market,
and producing ten million pieces
a year. The dinner set was one of
several items specially commissioned
to commemorate the first royal visit,
and joins a host of other Crown Lynn
commemorative items displayed
elsewhere in the exhibition. Although
much depleted over the years, it
remains in frequent use by the Clark
family.
The handleless railway cup is another
highly recognisable piece among the
family’s collection, a reminder both of
the factory’s early coup in gaining the
supply contract for the New Zealand
Railways during the war, and of the
reputation for handles breaking off
which initially dogged Crown Lynn.
The New Zealand Railways cup
and saucer became one of the most
well-known images of Kiwi products
of the twentieth century. The Toby Jug
in his likeness was presented to Clark
on his retirement, accompanied by
great mirth, a comic reminder of the
thousands of New Zealand Toby jugs
produced in imitation of Royal Doulton
and other English manufacturers from
the late 1940s.
In pride of place in the family’s
collection sits a large Handwerk platter
by Frank Carpay, the Dutch designer
Clark had hired in 1953. Carpay’s
time at Crown Lynn was reluctantly
terminated in 1956 when it became
clear that the New Zealand public was
not ready for the modern and abstract
elements of the Handwerk range
design. While letting Carpay go signified
the pragmatic decision of Clark
the businessman, it is telling of his
commitment to and love for the work
itself that much later in his life he outbid
fierce competition at auction to acquire
this beautiful example of early modern
design in New Zealand.
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WEST GALLERY
EAST GALLERY
1. Juliet Collins: Bohemia Ware
1. Production pieces
2. Crown Lynn: 1960s–1987
2. Early Crown Lynn
3. Alison Reid: Colourglaze
3. Shards dug from the Crown Lynn factory
4. John Parker: Whiteware
4. Crown Lynn: 1940s–1950s
5. Billy Apple: Dorothy Thorpe
5. Helen Slater: Figurines
6. Asumi Mizuo
6. Brian Ronson: Wharetana
7. Brian Ronson: Frank Carpay
7. Jeff Elston: Trickle-glaze
8. Mary Morrison: Fiesta
9. New Zealand Government: Bellamy’s Dinner ware
10. Crown Lynn Design entries
11. Clark Family Collection
This booklet has been published in association with
the exhibition
Crown Lynn: Crockery of Distinction
29 January 2011–25 April 2011
© City Gallery Wellington
Principal Sponsor
Images are copyright and reproduced with permission.
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We would like to acknowledge Roderick and
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Printed by Printlink, Wellington.
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Text by Abby Cunnane and Aaron Lister,
Exhibition Curators.
Design: Spencer Levine
Photography: Sean Aickin
ISBN 0-9582704-8-1
City Gallery Wellington is managed by the Wellington
Museums Trust with major funding support from the
Wellington City Council.