https://www.ceramiccollectorssociety.com/

Ceramic Collectors Society, PO Box 1 DARLINGHURST Post Office, Darlinghurst (2026)

02/09/2026

‘Ceramic vessels’ Toshiko Takaezu, circa 2002. American-Hawaii, various sizes from 2 3/4”- 6 1/4”. Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts collection, Little Rock, Arkansas USA.

Hawaii-born Toshiko Takaezu’s (1922-2011) work was inspired by her youth growing up in Hawaii and her university studies in art there. Study followed at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills in Michigan and a career as a professional teacher and potter followed. She travelled to her ancestral home in Japan, and South America to develop her style.

Takaezu taught at her alma mata the Cranbrook Academy in Michigan, at the University of Wisconsin, the Cleveland Institute of Art, and eventually Princeton University, where she taught until her retirement in 1992. Her work is on display in art museums throughout the United States.

These five objects are representative of her “closed form” sculptures, a specialisation of her work inspired by Abstract Expressionism and the traditions of East Asia. Closed form pieces often included rattles, a signature feature of her work in this area.

These are smaller in size than her more usual and larger wheel-thrown single pieces. Takaezu’s shapes also include bowls and vases but less rarely include the colours and decorations portrayed here. The scenes appear to this author to be in part representative of Hawaiian beaches and coast in a moonlit landscape.

She used glazes like Makaha blue, as shown here, and some of her work includes volcanic sand to highlight the surface glaze. Recently, one of her individual pieces (pictured) realised as much as US$10,000 at auction.

Credit: The AMFA, and the Noguchi Museum.

30/08/2026

19th-century stoneware ‘Heron’ jug by Riley Bratton, Newton Township, Muskingham County, Ohio, USA. Circa 1850. 11”-high.

This unmarked, “two-gallon“ capacity jug features an incised illustration of a heron staring at a fish with an owl on the opposite side, and is attributed to Riley Bratton by matching the gallonage marking lines on the piece to anther example found in the rubbish pit at the site of the former pottery.

Mr. Riley Bratton is a lesser known Ohio potter, but a small number of the utilitarian stoneware items he produced in Muskingum County in the mid-19th century have an interesting characteristic: incised designs that make them of interest to North American stoneware and folk art collectors.

Born in Guernsey County around 1816, Bratton established a pottery on an 80-acre tract acquired in 1841 by Edward Bratton, presumably his father. Stoneware dug from the pottery’s rubbish pitin 1980 included marked and decorated fragments depicting birds, fish and a sailing ship. Two of the shards were dated 1848.

The pottery seem to have been short-lived? The 1850 Ohio census lists Bratton as working for another nearby stoneware-maker. A year later, he went to California for … the gold rush.

Credit: “Ohio Life”, research by James L. Murphy, and Garth’s Auctioneers & Appraisers in Columbus, Ohio.

29/08/2026

Wedgwood ‘Unique Ware’ powder bowl with cover, bone china, ‘Agateware’ decoration created by mixing together differently coloured bone china bodies, designed by Norman Wilson, c.1962 (?). Marks: Printed in green: WEDGWOOD, N.W. Impressed: WEDGWOOD, MADE IN ENGLAND, NW, H.

This powder bowl and cover was displayed and described by owner Roger, our long-time member and society patron, at the August meeting of the Ceramic Collectors Society.

Roger reports:

Norman Wilson is especially noted for developing a range of matt glazes introduced in 1933, which were used to great effect on Keith Murray’s modernist vases. Wilson also introduced a series of ‘Unique’ ranges that brought studio pottery techniques into the Wedgwood factory. His designs incorporated glazes from special recipes. Produced in small numbers and not sold in Wedgwood’s shops, many of the pieces combined modern glazes and forms with reinterpretations of classic Wedgwood decoration, from agateware to incised banding and turning. ‘Unique’ ranges were first exhibited in 1936.

Credit: Information V&A Museum, WE.4226-2014). Photographs by Roger and the editor.

29/08/2026

“Eyes on You!”

Porcelain plates, by Piero Fornasetti, displaying the face of Lina Cavalieri in the ‘Tema e Variazioni’ series and three other designs. Various sizes. Circa 1980’s. Milan, Italy.

Edwardian-era opera singer Lina Cavalieri is one of the most ubiquitous faces in design, and made so most recently by the Milan-based artist Piero Fornasetti, and now his daughter and continued by the Fornasetti firm.

Piero Fornasetti enjoyed an obsessive fascination with the face of the singer and depicted conventional and decidedly humorous portals of her face.

The designer is pictured with his ‘muse’, or at least with her face on his plates. Lina is pictured at the height of her operatic career.

These plates were displayed at the August meeting of the Ceramic Collectors Society by our member Adrienne, and to great acclaim!

Adrienne provides the following biography of Piero Fornasetti, based in part on the book ‘Designer of Dreams’.

————

Piero Fornasetti was a true original in the area of mid-20th century design. He was born into a wealthy bourgeois family in Milan on the 10th November 1913. Fornasetti’s father wanted him to work in the family accounting business, but he refused and instead chose to take drawing classes at the Academie Breda. He was expelled after two years for insubordination. In the 1940’s he founded the design and decorative arts atelier in Milan, which still operates today in the villa built by his grandfather under the stewardship of Barnaba his son.

He concentrated on surface enrichment rather than form. He produced through his atelier over 11,000 items.

In 1933, he took part in the 5th Trienniale with a series of printed headscarves. Although he did not succeed in winning any prizes, his work was noticed by Gio Ponti who commissioned him to produce the lunari calendars which ran into the 1960’s. It was at that point they established a friendship and eventually formed a close creative partnership.

In 1952, Piero began working on what would later become his most famous and iconic series: "Tema e Variazioni". Starting from a portrait of a woman seen in a magazine from the late nineteenth century, he began a representational study that would accompany him throughout his life. The subject was the face of Lina Cavalieri, an opera singer who lived at the turn of the 19th- and 20th-centuries and who was celebrated as the most beautiful woman in the world. At that time, Lina Cavalieri represented an archetype of enigmatic, classical beauty that Fornasetti reinterpreted by means of over 400 "variations".

From butterflies, hot air balloons, classical architecture, newsprint, fish, the sun and music, Piero was a master of reinvention of design.

Since taking over the business after his father’s death on 15th October 1988, Barnaba Fornasetti has been careful not to dimmish the brand. He is now growing a small range of home fragrances along with a recent series of vases in collaboration with Italian ceramicists Bitossi.

25/08/2026

‘Wedgwood Dragon Lustre Vase’, England, circa 1920, tapered form with flaring rim and foot, mottled blue ground with coloured and gilded dragons, printed mark, height 11 1/4”.

Victoria brought her newly acquired lustreware vase to our August meeting. Dragon lustreware is of course overshadowed by the Fairyland lustreware pieces of the same period but it is equally attractive.

The decoration was designed or influenced by Susannah Margaretta ‘Daisy’ Makeig-Jones (1881–1945’, Wedgwood’s most innovative and talented designer of the early 20th-century.

25/08/2026

The August meeting of the Ceramic Collectors Society attracted a display of new ceramics from our members’ collections that were included in our winter-time ‘show-and-tell’.

Here we see a 1920’s Lustreware vase displaying a rampant Dragon, a swirling Bone China Wedgwood ‘Unique Ware’ powder bowl and lid with Agatware decoration, and 20th-century Italian plates by Piero Fornasetti of Milan.

Thirteen members described their pieces and revealed details that made them quite special additions to join their ever-growing collections.

Thank you to all who attended this meeting arranged at short notice following an unavoidable change of plan due to the illness of our planned speaker who will now come to the December meeting.

More images to follow!

23/08/2026

‘For The Ashes’. An Aynsley Pottery oblong pin tray printed in colour with the flags of Australia and England (sic) to centre and beneath crossed bats, wicket and ball with title, circa 1930. Longton, Stoke-onTrent, England. The pin tray measures 4”x 3.25”. Aynsley Pottery stamp and tiny gold painter’s brush stroke to base.

This delightful example of sporting memorabilia celebrates the premier sporting event of the world, the cricket tussle fought every two years over five tests between England and Australia for the honour of winning the Ashes. Played alternatively in England and then in five of the Australian states, it attracts a huge following in both countries.

The transfer illustration is hand-embellished with colours, and the edges of the tray are gilt finished. The Union Jack depicted should more properly be the St. George flag of England. The England team is its proper title, regardless of whether or not its players are Englishmen!

Another example was recently sold by Knightly Auctions in a specialist Cricketing auction and went for £150 hammer price + commission. This example was spotted in an opportunity shop in Sydney for $25!

This tray was brought by the author to the August meeting of the Ceramic Collectors Society and attracted considerable attention.

There is a saying, “playing for the Ashes”, meaning to commit all effort to winning at a pinnacle level in Sports. For nearly 150-years it has involved the winning of a small terracotta urn supposedly containing the burnt ashes of the remains of a cricket bail from the wicket stumps used in the first England Australia Test in 1882!

The little terracotta urn and its contents are beyond a monetary value and are priceless. It never leaves its adopted home at the MCC, much to the disdain of the Australian people.

———-

The Ansley Pottery was established in Longton, Staffordshire in 1775. In 1997, Aynsley China was acquired by The Belleek Pottery Group in Ireland. The company closed its Stoke-on-Trent factory in September 2014. The brand continues.

10/08/2026

Australian Studio Pottery Vase, with hand-painted Bush landscape scene Vase Signed Gamble 86 on the base. 42cm-tall. Private collection via auction.

This late 20th-century studio pottery vase is by Ian Gamble and appears to carry his personally incised signature as other work is generically found as ‘Gamble’s Pottery”. Another version of this vase, similar but not identical in decoration, was recently sold at auction by Leski’ with three matching pots with lids. See Comments.

Ian Gamble is a graduate of the Ballarat School of Mines who exhibited with the Victorian Ceramic Group in the 1980s and 1990s. An expert thrower, he made vases glazed white with colourful hand-painted floral decoration Several very large examples of his work can be viewed at the Convent Gallery, Daylesford. His pottery remains popular amongst Australiana collectors of ceramics.

Credit: Australian Potter's Marks.

10/08/2026

An Australian pottery vase with hand-painted landscape scene,
signed "MARU", 28cm-high. Post-World War Two.

Very little is known to this author about this 20th-century hand-painted (?) Vase depicting a bushland homestead. It is only incised with the word ‘MARU’ on the base. The multi-faceted faces and angular neck of the vase would have made it a challenge for the potter to throw.

The trees are somewhat in the style of John Glover and the other 19th-century colonial painters of the Australian landscape.

05/08/2026

Glazed earthenware vase by George E. Ohr (1857–1918), Biloxi Pottery, Biloxi, Mississippi, United States, circa 1888-1910. 13cm-high × 10cm-wide.

This vase features a pinched and folded rim, a floral motif, and an ochre glaze. It is incised to the underside ‘Biloxi’, for the pottery, and with the decorator's initials of ‘J. HP’.

George Ohr of Biloxi, Mississippi, is an American art potter who prospered in the period 1888 to 1910. He built his own kiln, dug his clay, threw his vessels on the potter’s wheel to wafer-thinness, and then covered them with novel glazes in his pottery. In form and decoration they are essentially early American examples of ‘Abstract Expressionism.’

Barely ten years after he began making vases like this example, Ohr closed his workshop.

This vase came to auction at Toomey & Co. in March 2026 from a private collection and fetched a four-figure dollar sum.

Credit: Toomey & Co. Auctions USA, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Ceramic Collectors Society

02/09/2026

30/08/2026

29/08/2026

29/08/2026

25/08/2026

25/08/2026

23/08/2026

10/08/2026

10/08/2026

05/08/2026

Address

Website

Alerts

Contact The Organization

Shortcuts

Share

Category

Listing takedown request