Potter, was born in Adelaide in December 1892, oldest of the four children of Hubert William (Bill) Holden and his wife Annie Maria Turner. She was also a niece of Win Preston, a talented amateur artist ( History , p.67), and a cousin of May Gibbs . Her two younger brothers were Leslie, a WWI air ace, and James, at one time director of General Motors-Holden, the company formed by Nell’s cousin Edward and uncle H.J. Holden. The youngest member of the family was Winfred [sic] Turner Holden, born in Adelaide in October 1904. Soon after Win’s birth, the family moved to Sydney where Bill Holden and his brother-in-law Herbert Preston established the Australian subsidiary of the Nestlé Swiss Milk Company. The family initially lived at Mosman then c.1911 moved to Lynwood a large property in Winton Street, Warrawee. During WWI Nell was in charge of a Voluntary Aid Detachment of the Red Cross that established a nursery at Turramurra, growing cut flowers and raising seedlings for sale to raise funds for the war effort. After the war Nell planned to take up commercial art in order to be financially independent, but her father vetoed this.
In 1971 Nell wrote a record of her early struggles (published in History pp.67-71) to become a potter, which she decided to be in 1926 – inspired perhaps, Martin suggests (p.7), by the British studio and industrial pottery she had seen on a visit to England in 1925. Pottery was also an acceptable hobby for a young lady, the Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW (which the sisters joined in 1928) having vice-regal patronage. Opportunity came when the Warrawee land was subdivided and the house sold (the family retained part of the bottom of the garden containing a gardener’s cottage in the form of a Swiss Chalet imported from Switzerland in the early 1920s for use as a pavilion for Nestlé at the Royal Easter Show that had been re-erected with additions at Warrawee in 1925). In 1927 the Holdens moved to Edgecliff Road, Woollahra, making it convenient for Nell and Win to enrol at ESTC in 1928 for pottery, clay modelling and china painting classes taught by J. Arthur Peach and 'Design’ taught by Phyllis Shillitoe .
The sisters found the pottery classes quite unsatisfactory – Mr. Peach was a devotee of china painting – and left to learn from Mr Guthrie, a thrower at Fowlers [Commercial] Pottery: 'Mr Guthrie helped us fire our first kiln (which was built in my Aunt’s [Win Preston’s] garden at [Shellcove Road,] Kurraba Point)… [using coal as well as wood and coke] The chimney smoked like a warship and there were complaints from the neighbours so we had to give up firing in that way.’ No gas kiln in Australia was suitable and the sisters and their mother visited England again in 1929 and learned about kilns, glazes and wheels. There the English Gas Light and Coke Company arranged to send plans for a small kiln to Sydney. Made (with difficulty over almost 12 months) by the Australian Gas Light Company, it was set up in a small pottery studio at 'The Chalet’, Winton Street, Warrawee, Bill, Annie and Win having returned to live in the cottage in late 1929. Nell joined them 12 months later. The kiln was installed in 1930 and the company’s achievement was publicised in Building in December 1931, illustrated with a photograph of Win and Nell Holden loading their new kiln. Woman’s Budget (30 December 1931) carried a similar story and the Building article was reprinted by AGL in a brochure promoting the product, illustrated with photos of Win and Nell in the 'Wynnel Pottery Studio’ erected just behind the Chalet.
There the sisters experimented with local clay and made some of the earliest coil pots in Sydney, which they sold through the Arts & Crafts Shop in Rowe Street. Win married in 1932 and gradually abandoned pottery, but Nell continued, buying a commercial wheel with a 1-horsepower motor 'which was good for any amount of clay’. In November 1933 an extension housing a showroom, 'architecturally in sympathy with the house and connected to it by a stone-flagged path bordered with Japanese iris’, was built at right angles to the studio (Martin). The Daily Telegraph (December 1933) published several photographs of the sisters in the studio (reproduced Martin), followed by Woman’s Budget in August 1934 and the Sydney Morning Herald on 16 November 1934 ('Exhibition in a garden studio’) and 17 January 1935 ('Swiss chalet with additions’). It was by no means the first pottery studio in Sydney (see Martin p.11), but the Wynnel Pottery Studio attached to the Holdens’ picturesque chalet had more media appeal in the 1930s than any of the others.
An active member of the NSW Society of Arts & Crafts from 1928 until her death, Nell made a great variety of pots in her Warrawee studio pre-WWII, as can be seen in late 1930s photograph ( History pp.30-31 and Martin). Despite a government regulation that restricted potters to utilitarian ware only during the war, she was able to continue to produce her distinctive 'banksia man’ jugs, based on her cousin’s creation since the mould had been made pre-war (an example of a cream slip-cast earthenware banksia jug c.1945, private collection, is illustrated by Martin, p.8). Nell wrote in 1971:
My speciality was “slip” ware – white with blue slip colours – green – also pink etc on white clay. White slip on brown clay pottery is an endless subject… When the Second World War came, I was told by the authorities (as others like me were) I could make only utility ware. I did make endless cups and saucers, teapots etc, as these articles were not coming into Australia.
She also helped with the Red Cross classes for convalescent ex-servicemen during the war. In 1950 she taught at the Society’s pottery class at North Sydney and after it closed had 10 pupils at her Warrawee studio for about 2 years, then abandoned teaching for her own work.
In 1954 Holden won the Society’s Elisabeth Söderberg Memorial Award (est. 1940) for her pottery. She won it again in 1956. That year she judged the crafts at the Castle Hill Agricultural Show with Myrtle Innes , another longstanding member of the NSW Society of Arts and Crafts. The Society’s Christmas party was held in Holden’s Turramurra studio in 1957. In 1965 a small members’ exhibition preceding the annual exhibition in November was held there and the Söderberg Memorial Award made (Miss Row’s christening robe won; Miss Woods’s 'bark picture’ was equal third). Sales totalled £327/6/-. She held another exhibition in her studio-home in 1966. Nell was President of the Society in 1966-68 and she succeeded Olive Nock as Patron in 1978. She died in 1980.
EXAMPLES: a sky blue wheel-thrown earthenware vase with simple carved slip decoration c. 1940 private collection, is on the cover of Australiana Feb.2003; others in Martin also pcs.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2011
