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Bessie Eleanor Potter was born in Staffordshire on 4 September 1874, the youngest child of a family of three sons and three daughters born to a merchant, William Ero Potter and his wife Elizabeth Frances Warren. She was raised in England and probably had some training there but it has not proved possible to establish a record of her early life. She married Walter Page Devereux at Horncastle, Lincolnshire in 1897 and bore four children: Alan, Robert Brian, Harold and Joan.

The first evidence of her activity in Queensland was when she exhibited a carved firescreen and plaster casts at the second exhibition of the Arts and Crafts Society of Brisbane in 1914. She probably learned these skills at the Central Technical College as modelling and woodcarving were taught by L. J. Harvey at that time. She enrolled in the formal course at the College and received an honours pass for Design II in 1915 and for Design III the following year. She was one of Harvey’s first students for pottery in 1916-17 and in the latter year was noted as one of the principal exhibitors. Mrs Devereux worked with the Red Cross Handicrafts Sub-Committee 1918-26 and from 1922-26 she taught pottery, including wheel throwing, at the Anzac Hostel, Kangaroo Point. She exhibited pottery at the Queensland Art Society in 1919 and also at the Queensland National Agricultural and Industrial Association 1922-26 where she received numerous prizes.

When the Arts and Crafts Society of Brisbane was reformed in 1922 she rejoined and continued to exhibit items of her pottery until 1926. A reviewer in 1922 commented that her pottery showed the most 'advanced attainment’ among exhibitors and was praised in succeeding years.

She also sold her pottery through the Austral Book Club and an advertisement in Sydney’s Home magazine in December 1925 commented that her 'handicraft is agreed by expert judges to be amongst the best in the Commonwealth. Inlaid and underglaze work in original designs and beautiful colouring, show the fine finish for which the Queensland craftswoman is noted.’ Also in 1925 she exhibited four examples of her pottery with the Society of Artists, Sydney. In 1927 she applied for 12 months leave of absence from the Red Cross and moved to Sydney where she exhibited 15 items of pottery in that year’s exhibition of the Society of Arts and Crafts of New South Wales. (The Powerhouse Museum purchased their painted vase from this exhibition.) She subsequently moved to Melbourne where in 1929 she exhibited with the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria and was described as a Victorian exhibitor when two ceramic items were included in the Art Society of Canberra’s exhibition. At the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria’s Garden Week Exhibition in 1929 she showed a fired garden jar and also sent a pottery jar to the 1929 Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland exhibition.

She subsequently returned to England in 1930 but it has not been possible to trace evidence of her activity there. The Devereux’s frequently returned to Australia to avoid English winters and were forced to spend the duration of the years of World War Two in Melbourne where her husband died. Bessie Devereux died in England in 1948.

Queensland Art Gallery: Researach Curator, Queensland Heritage

Writers:

Cooke, Glenn R. Note: Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, Queensland Art Gallery

Date written:

2005

Last updated:

2011