Page 42 - Constructing Craft

lived with her grandmother in Sydney where she visited brick and pipe works and a

teapot factory. In 1927, when she was 26, she exhibited her work for the first time
and demand for her pottery increased. During the Depression her pottery helped

support her husband and family on their farm in Levin. Her book, Pottery for
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Pleasure in Australia and New Zealand, became an invaluable guide to the potters
who began their careers in the late 1960s and 1970s. She was aware of her place
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in the history of craft when she referred to herself as the “Grandmother” of potting.

Elizabeth Lissaman, January 1930. Photo: National Library.

Olive Jones was one of only two studio potters working in the Auckland area in the

1930s. She and her sister were described as ‘a two-woman antipodean arts and
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crafts movement.’ She attended Elam School of Art and first saw studio pottery in
Australia. Following her sister Gwenda to Britain, she enrolled at the London County

Council Central School of Arts and Crafts and took night classes at Camberwell
School of Arts and Crafts where she met Robert Field (see below). Olive Jones set

up her studio in 1934 in Auckland, dug her own clay and continued to make pottery
through to the mid-1980s. A retrospective exhibition of her work was held at the

annual exhibition of the Auckland Studio Potters in 1979. Three articles in the New
Zealand Potter magazine in 1960, 1978 and 1995 give an indication of how

Constructing Craft