Crown Lynn: Pottery for the People discussion

Crown Lynn: Pottery for the People
4 November 2011 – 14 January 2012

Saturday 19 November, 1pm
Artist Lisa Reihana and curator Andrew Clifford discuss the cultural implications of Crown Lynn’s use of M?ori motifs for their highly collectable Wharetana ware.

It is more than 20 years since Crown Lynn Potteries closed its New Lynn factory but the output of this iconic company continues to capture the imagination of New Zealanders. Collectors increasingly pay large sums for second-hand crockery that was once ubiquitous throughout the country, while artists and designers pay homage with their own new designs.

Crown Lynn: Pottery for the people explores our ongoing obsession with the classic kiwiana brand that was once the Southern Hemisphere’s biggest pottery producer. The exhibition focuses on nine different personal collections spanning tableware to hand-potted vases to production equipment: Juliet Collins’ Bohemia Ware by Mirek Smisek, Alison Reid’s Colourglaze, Billy Apple’s Dorothy Thorpe, Brian Ronson’s collections of Frank Carpay and Wharetana ware, Mary Morrison’s Fiesta ware, elements from the Clarks’ family collection, John Parker’s Whiteware that responds to designs by Ernest Shufflebotham (aka Shufflebottom) and Keith Murray, and a selection from the vast archive assembled by Richard Quinn, now administered by the Portage Ceramics Trust. This diversity is testament to the many faces of Crown Lynn, which holds an eclectically subjective fascination for every collector, and it is through the devotion of these collectors that the Crown Lynn brand lives on.

Crown Lynn emerged from within the Amalgamated Brick and Pipe Company Ltd, which produced the bricks for the Kenneth Myers Centre when it was built as a broadcasting centre in 1934. Tom Clark, great-grandson of the pottery’s original founder, established a fledgling Porcelain Specialties Department (Ambrico) in the late 1930s, re-branded in the 1940s as Crown Lynn. He placed David Jenkin, a recently recruited Elam School of Fine Arts graduate, in charge of the new design department, where he remained for more than 30 years, overseeing the development of new product lines with local and international designers.

Based on Crown Lynn: Crockery of Distinction, a City Gallery Wellington exhibition.