Ivan McMeekin (1919-1993) was born in Melbourne, Victoria, on 13 September, 1919. His mother was a pianist and his father an electrical engineer. He became interested in painting and drawing at an early age. His family moved to Sydney and, in his last years at school, he took lessons with J.S. Watkins and later with Hayward (Bill) Veal. His first job was at Kodak Australasia in the advertising department and he also worked for three months as a jackaroo on a sheep station near Inverell.
When war broke out in 1939, he enlisted in the Royal Australian Navy, serving for three years before resigning his commission in 1942 and joining the merchant navy. He had time between commissions to study painting at the East Sydney Technical College and to meet his future wife Colleen Holmes for the first time while she was taking cello classes at the Conservatorium. In 1946, he signed a contract with the China Navigation Company and spent three years on the China Coast. His first captain was a collector of Sung Dynasty pottery. McMeekin’s response to these works awoke in him the idea of becoming a potter.
He travelled to England via Paris in 1949 and started classes with Michael Leach at the Penzance School of Art. During a break in classes, he went to Michael Cardew’s stoneware pottery at Wenford Bridge to help with a firing and stayed there for three-and-a-half years. Cardew had been Bernard Leach’s first apprentice, but was also expert in the English slipware tradition. Under his tutelage, McMeekin adopted a functional aesthetic, using locally sourced materials, oriental-style glazes and reduction firing techniques, but also learnt to throw and decorate in the English style.
In 1951, Cardew was appointed by the Nigerian government to the post of Pottery Officer in the Department of Commerce and Industry, during which time he built and developed a pottery training centre at Abuja in Northern Nigeria. McMeekin looked after the pottery during Cardew’s long absences. During this time, he met up again with Colleen Holmes who had come to England to further her cello studies. The two married and had their first daughter, Trish, in England. It was also during this time that McMeekin first worked with Bourry Box kilns.
In 1953, the family returned to Australia and McMeekin entered into a five-year contract to set up a stoneware pottery at the Sturt Craft Centre at Mittagong, NSW. The centre had been established in 1941 as a site for craft training and practice. The Sturt Pottery was to be the third workshop at Sturt and McMeekin was given a free hand in its development. He spent the next five years researching local materials, building Australia’s first Bourry Box kiln and designing a repertoire of simple functional forms. His first apprentice was Gwyn Johns (Hanssen Pigott) who visited him while researching a thesis on Australian artist potters in 1954. Les Blakebrough and Col Levy joined the workshop in 1957. All three went on to become acclaimed Australian potters.
Through his work at Sturt, McMeekin formed relationships with a wider community interested in promoting the production of stoneware in Australia. He met Mollie Douglas while doing some teaching at St George Technical College. He undertook trips with Ivan Englund to explore clay deposits and igneous rocks. The three of them met with Peter Rushforth to discuss the idea of forming a Potters’ Society of NSW. This was founded in 1956, subsequently becoming the Potters’ Society of Australia. McMeekin was a president of the society for a time and contributed technical articles to its journal.
At Sturt, McMeekin found himself increasingly at odds with Sturt founder Winifred West. When his contract expired in 1958, it was not renewed and, in 1959, he took up a position in the Department of Industrial Arts at the University of New South Wales. The department had a brief to conduct research on materials technology and he was able to pursue his interest in the use of Australian raw materials and clay bodies. His research notes formed the basis of a definitive book on this subject, Notes for Australian Potters, first published in 1967 and reprinted in 1978 and 1985.
In 1966, the Vice Chancellor asked him if he would be interested in the idea of introducing pottery to Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory. McMeekin sampled and tested Northern Territory clays and shales and designed a pottery and clay processing unit for the Bagot Aboriginal Reserve in Darwin. The facility was completed in early 1968 and Michael Cardew was invited to spend six months in Australia as a visiting fellow to teach the first trainees. A second opportunity to work with Aboriginal people presented itself in 1970, when Eddie Purantatameri and John Bosco Tipiloura, two Bagot trainees, invited McMeekin to help set up the Tiwi Pottery on Bathurst Island. He set to work again, researching local materials, building a kiln for use by the pottery and spending time there himself as a pottery supervisor in 1975.
Already in ill health after his return from Bathurst Island, McMeekin retired from his position at the University of New South Wales in 1978. He took his second daughter Susie on as apprentice and returned to life as a potter, first at his home at Woronora River south of Sydney, then at Gulgong. He had been interested in Gulgong clays since 1960 when he started taking students there on field trips. He bought an old pig farm and set it up as a fully equipped pottery and clay processing unit. He called his new home Mooramaju, an Aboriginal word meaning 'white stone’ and also the name of a site near Darwin where he had prospected for clay in 1966.
During his years at Mooramaju, while increasingly debilitated by cancer, he continued to make pots, research local materials and review books, helped in the heavy work by local potters Kaye Rice and Philip Robinson. He died on 28 May, 1993. Tributes in the Spring issue of Pottery in Australia speak eloquently about his contribution to the post-war pottery movement in Australia.
His mark is an impressed 'IM’ with a crossed pick and shovel for work made at Sturt.
- Writers:
-
Joanna Mendelssohn
Judith Pearce
- Date written:
- 2012
- Last updated:
- 2013
