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Art Deco Australian China Painters
by:
Avis Smith
Art Deco ceramics of the 1920-30s are documented and illustrated in several publications dealing predominantly with studio potters and large commercial potteries. Yet comparatively little attention has been paid to a related field of painting on-glaze enamels onto purchased china/porcelain blanks and producing another form of Art Deco workthat of china painting.
Australian china painting in the Art Deco style of the 1920-30s is represented in most Australian state art galleries and in the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. Private collectors may still find good examples in a few specialist antique shops, but knowledge of the artists is often lacking and sadly, many women china-painters did not sign their work. It is therefore helpful to know something of the china painting styles and subject matter of the different periods and to be aware of individual artists preferences and favoured palettes. Subject matter and even style could change, but most artists continued to use their favourite colours for many decades. Women artists with a background of formal art school training usually printed their names underneath the china, but rarely added a date.
South Australia has produced a large number of china painters due to the high profile of the South Australian School of Art during the 1920-30s, when china-painting classes under Miss Gladys Good were always well attended.1 The influential Principal, Laurence H. Howie, both a painter and a china painter, was active within the Royal South Australian Society of Arts (RSASA), as was Miss Good.2 Many members of that Society had attended art schools, and china painting was readily shown in the Societys art exhibitions.
Garden flowers, Australian flora and birds were always popular subjects to paint in traditional style on purchased china blanks such as coffee sets, tea sets and vases. However, some artists were well aware of the Modern movement and adapted elements of the new design styles to their china painting.
Maude Wynes exhibited regularly in South Australia. She exhibited paintings in the RSASA in 1912 and by the 1920s was a competent china painter. A piece she signed and dated 1923the year Howard Carter opened the tomb of Tutankhamunshows that she was well aware of the interest at that time in the art of other cultures. This bold and colourful work shows Aztec and Egyptian influences, and the black outline of the design flows elegantly up and around the form of the Czechoslovak Victoria brand vase. However, it was not till 1927 that she exhibited a larger body of china painting in the Societys exhibitions but her choice of china and her subject matter tended to be more traditional.
Maude E. Gum was another versatile South Australian artist, teacher, exhibitor and committee member of the RSASA who exhibited work in a range of media, but did not exhibit china painting regularly till the early 1930s. Egyptian art was one influence that Gum used in her interpretation of an Art Deco design she painted c.1931-33 on a Czech Epiag brand plate, signed M. E. Gum.3 Although more widely known for her watercolours of gum trees, as art teacher at Wilderness School, Adelaide, Gum was an excellent drawing and design teacher.
Norah Godlee was a teacher and potter who regularly exhibited china painting on purchased china blanks with the RSASA. In her china painting on a fruit bowl, she experimented with the Art Deco style by boldly outlining in black her slightly conventionalised fruit designs. Godlee often used elongated, thin, stem-like lines, to emphasise the shape of the china and connect the spaced groups of colourful images in her china painting. The bowl is also Czechoslovak Victoria brand china, signed N.L. Godlee.
After Gladys Good returned from England in 1931, students of china painting at the South Australian School of Art were especially encouraged to conventionalise floral images and produce work that reflected Art Deco designs. The clear, bright, apricot colour used by Good and other students in the school was applied by a 1935 student, Mavis Phelps, on a cup, plate and saucer, followed the overseas popularity of orange hues on hand-painted ceramic ware. Phelpss flower design is outlined in dark orange instead of the more usual black, is well placed on the inside of the cup (a difficult area on which to paint) and the set is intended for a right-handed user. The unbranded china is signed M. Phelps.
Phyllis Anthony was an award-winning student in the South Australian School of Art in 1930 and an artist capable of painting imaginative scenic designs. The six-sided vase on which she painted repeat designs in golden browns and greens is a very collectable example of Art Deco Australian china painting. She maintains movement of the design around the vase by the use of expressive geometrical black lines to suggest clouds and hills, while flights of birds and stylised vertical foliage lines of willow trees emphasise the vertical form of the vase. The unbranded china is signed P. Anthony.
A. O. Kriehn painted onto an unbranded, Czech white cup, saucer and plate set, a striking Modern design which has strong, clean geometric shapes in iron red colour over a smoothly painted and padded cream background. Kriehn then outlined the red shapes with a fine black line and incorporated bands of black lustre into the designs. The artists adaptation of part of a red Sunray pattern allied with black, upright formalised architectural rectangles is reminiscent of a sunrise behind skyscrapers. It is very Art Deco in design, with some similarity to the treatment on a Clarice Cliff Sunray vase.4 The set is signed A. O. Kriehn underneath the plate, but little is known of the artist.
Annie F. Mitchell is better known for producing and teaching earthenware in her pottery studio in Goodwood, Adelaide, during the 1930s after her return from Brisbane where teacher L. J. Harvey influenced her.5 However, Mitchell had been a china painter in the 1920s. Examples of her china painting are not easy to locate, but for the rather complex design of Scottish thistles that she painted on a jug, c. mid to late 1920s, she used a deep purple accent on the handle and rim instead of the more usual Art Deco black. Although she exhibited in the craft section of the RSASA exhibitions from 1937 to 1939, her work was hand-built pottery not china painting on purchased blanks.
Researching women artists and china painters is made difficult as their surnames frequently changed after marriage, and when initials only are used problems are compounded. However finding information about the artists, the type of artwork they produced and when, is always interesting.
China painting was produced predominantly by women and used by them for a multitude of purposes. Hand-painted china in the Art Deco style is an important part of Australias heritage and certainly part of womens social history. Moreover, with care, those china treasures can still be used occasionally for special occasions; the artwork on them was well fired and will not wash off, but washing by hand is safer than using the dishwasher.
Acknowledgement All photographs are by Clayton Glen
Reference
Peter Timms, Australian Studio Pottery & China Painting, Oxford UP, Melbourne, 1986.
Notes
1 The South Australian School of Art has the longest history of any art school in Australia. First called the Adelaide School of Arts, in 1861 it became the School of Design, then in 1892 the School of Design, Painting and Technical Art and in 1909 the South Australian School of Arts and Crafts. Since 1958, it has been known as the South Australian School of Art, though in the early 1990s it became part of the University of South Australia.
2 This was originally called the South Australian Society of Arts but became the Royal South Australian Society of Arts (RSASA) in the mid 1930s.
3 I was one of her china painting students in 1947. Maude Gum preferred to call such plates that were not intended for table use, plaques.
4 Ghislaine Wood, Essential Art Deco, V&A Publications, London, 2003, p. 37
5 Noris Ioannou, Ceramics in South Australia 1836-1986, Wakefield Press, Netley, Adelaide, 1986, p. 315. |
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