potter, leather worker, china painter and designer, was born in England. She came to New South Wales with her family at the age of 10. In Sydney she studied model drawing and watercolour painting at Sydney Technical College under Alfred Coffey and life drawing at his private studio. After a trip to England, where she studied china painting at the Chelsea Art School, she returned to Sydney and joined the Arts and Crafts Society of NSW (in 1910). She exhibited with the Society from 1910 to 1942, and in 1922 held a joint exhibition in its rooms with her business partner Ada Newman . She also exhibited with the Women’s Industrial Arts Society and, with Ada and Jessie Newman, was a member of the 'Ceramic Art Studio’ which fired works for many Sydney China Painters.
Atkinson and Newman had entered into partnership in about 1916, establishing the Ceramic Art Studio in the Penfolds Building, 183 Pitt Street, Sydney, where both made pottery; Atkinson also taught china painting and leatherwork. The business was a great success.
In 1924 Atkinson returned to England in order to inspect Arts and Crafts 'schools and working depots’ in Manchester, Birmingham and London. She also visited the English Woman’s Exhibition of Arts and Handicrafts at Westminster Hall, London: 'a very fine display, but after diligent search [she] could find nothing essentially different from what we have in Australia’. In her opinion, the two most outstanding exhibits were the coloured woodcarvings by Ruth Bannister and the distinctive leather work by Mrs Spring – both Australians. She found little china painting of note in England, most workers being absorbed into the large potteries to work on stock designs.
She and Newman continued in partnership, their studio being relocated to 147 Elizabeth Street by 1938. In about 1940 they moved to the Newman family home in Muston Street, Mosman, where they used gas and, later, electric kilns and fired work for other potters. French porcelain blanks were favoured for china painting but were hard to obtain, so they often used Doulton and Worcester blanks purchased from Prouds in Sydney. The two women worked together until Newman’s death in 1949. Atkinson then gave up china painting and pottery, resigned from the Society of Arts and Crafts in 1950 and concentrated on watercolours until arthritis forced her to abandon this in about 1980. She died in 1991 at the great age of 103.
Many of Atkinson’s early pieces, based on the Persian scenes of Edmund Dulac, were unashamedly illustrative at a time when that style had already lost favour. Nevertheless, all her designs, while never particularly avant-garde, are very subtle and delicate, each peculiarly fitted to the shape of the vessel to which it is applied and each painted directly from nature.
- Writers:
- Timms, Peter
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 2011
