Design and Art Australia Online

Potter Charles Richard Courtland was born in Sydney in 1872 and at the age of fourteen commenced an apprenticeship at Mashman’s Pottery in Sydney.

Gold fever brought him to Western Australia in the 1890s but he soon became disillusioned with the amount of gold easily won and opened a store in Northam supplying the railway workers engaged in constructing the Kalgoorlie pipeline. Nearby was the Millington Brickworks where he made pottery as an artist potter.

Stoneware clay was brought from Victoria, and coal to fire the stoneware was brought from Newcastle, as the local coal did not generate enough heat to vitrify the clay. Courtland’s partner in the store gambled it away one night and Courtland and his young wife Kathleen Riley, daughter of the editor of the Northam Advertiser, left Northam to work in a pottery in the south west near Bunbury, Western Australia, possibly Capel Potteries. A piece made at this time is still in the collection of the family. This is large footed bowl with applied motifs depicting Shakespeare, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. The motifs had been slip cast into carved cuttlefish moulds, a technique commonly used by jewellers.

In 1900 Courtland bought the property in Belmont where the pottery stands today. In 1902 he teamed up with a builder Samuel Pedersen to form the Courtland and Pedersen Sydney Pottery Works. The premises were only a shed. As they prospered the front of the building was extended and improved. Pedersen left after about seven years.

The work was thrown on kick wheels converted to electricity in 1906. The same wheels continued to be used. The original wares were garden pottery, domestic bread crocks and hotel bread crocks (to take ten loaves at a time), acid jars – covered with wicker work by the nearby Blind Institute in Maylands, pickling pots and ten gallon vessels for ginger beer. The majority of the production was salt-glazed stoneware similar to that produced at the Eastern States potteries – Bendigo, Fowlers and others. The clay was imported from Campbellfield in Victoria. The salt glazed pottery was fired in a large, round downdraft kiln fuelled with coal and finished with wood. These practical general-purpose lines were stamped Pedersen/Sydney Pottery Works/Belmont Western Australia or SPW. These wares were undertaken until 1942. Courtland kept up an allegiance to Sydney, which he visited every second year.

Courtland considered himself an artist potter. In 1906 he won a medal at the 'Chamber of Manufactures Exhibition’ in Perth with a moulded head of King Edward. He produced an extensive range of 'artwares’ such as vases and birdbaths with moulded decorations. These were made of earthenware, fired in a double-chamber, up-draught bottle-shaped kiln and glazed with a clear lead-based majolica, coloured with various oxides to produce browns, bright greens and greys. The clear glaze designed to melt between 950 and 1050 enhanced the rich terracotta of the local earth. This type of work was produced until at least 1925-26.

Marks used on the pottery include: “G. R. Courtland” (inscribed) from 1895-11, “Courtland and Pedersen Sydney Pottery Works Belmont, W.” (impressed stamp) from 1903-11, “SPW” from 1903-11, “Sydney Pottery Works” and “Courts Astral Ware” 1913-40s.

Writers:

Dr Dorothy Erickson

Date written:

2010

Last updated:

2011