Page 235 - Constructing Craft

Crown Lynn had difficulty convincing the public that the quality of their pottery was

as good as the imported ware. One method was to maintain a price that matched
imported pottery, while another was to have supporters within the government

promoting locally-made pottery. A National backbencher, T. P. Shand, for example,
was reported in 1952 complaining, ‘[W]e have had some shocking rubbish by way of

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English crockery in the last three or four years.’ The comment suggests that some
in positions of power detected a fall in the standard of imported pottery or it was an

attempt to boost confidence in New Zealand design. It also suggested a reaction to

the belief held by many New Zealanders that ‘all’ overseas manufactured products
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were of better quality – a characteristic that is colloquially referred to as ‘cultural
cringe’.

Diversification

In 1953 Crown Lynn moved into the ‘art’ market as part of a strategy to counter
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falling sales of their utilitarian wares. High end ‘art’ pottery would give the company
another market and more prestige. The idea may have also been inspired by the
success of the Martin Boyd Pottery, established in Sydney in 1948, where a

combination of studio and industrial techniques was used to produce highly

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coloured pottery which was often hand-decorated by art students. Another
motivating factor appears to have been a number of speciality pottery shops that

had opened in Auckland and Wellington in the late 1940s selling imported hand-

made pottery.

Constructing Craft