Identifying Australian Pottery 1960s to Date

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About Identifying Australian Pottery 1960s to Date

This is a place for people needing help to identify makers of Australian contemporary pottery, or just wanting to talk about their collections and finds.

Over the last fifty years, tens of thousands of Australians have worked as potters or ceramic artists. Some have become well-known nationally through solo and group exhibitions, with works represented in public and private collections. Others made high quality work that they sold through local galleries and outlets. Many people have worked with clay as a student or hobbyist without pursuing ceramics as a career.

It is easy to lose the memory of who made a piece, particularly when it changes hands. Sources that might help in the identification of a piece are many and varied. A useful summary of what is available written by Judith, the administrator of this group, can be found here.

Judith is building a database of Australian potters and their marks. At the heart of her database is a concordance of all the marks she has been able to find in eight years of research. If she doesn't reply to a query, or says she can't help, it is because she hasn't been able to find an answer in her records.

There is also a growing number of experts and specialist collectors in the group; and the image pool is a useful source of information in its own right. You can search it for names or initials using the search box in the top righthand corner.

There is no silver bullet: some works are quickly identified, many remain mysteries. Sorting out the great and good pieces from the mediocre and bad is one of our challenges, as is guarding against mis-attribution by developing an understanding of individual styles. But you never know when something might come along that helps with an ID and enhances the knowledge base.

Current projects

Members of the group are creating asterisked topics on known potters with images of marks. These are being linked to from a new resource - Australian potters' marks - and the images are being added to a growing, browsable, image pool. All members are welcome to contribute!

History

This group started its life at www.austpots.ning.com in September, 2008. The move to flickr was made in November 2009 to take advantage of flickr's better image management and sharing capabilities. For a summary of the discussions started at ning, see the ning archive.

http://australianpottersmarks.wordpress.com