Cultural colonising

Andrea Carlo Lucchesi (1859-1925), Love breaking the sword of hate (1900). Albert Park, Auckland,
purchased with funds provided by the estate of Helen Boyd.
The missing sword of hate was replaced in April 2015

From 25 February until 25 May, Tate Britain is the venue for a major exhibition of nineteenth century British sculpture entitled Sculpture Victorious. Although reviews to date have been less than kind, it's an opportunity to assess what has long been a neglected field of art. Sadly, notwithstanding the efforts of public benefactors such as the speculator James Tannock Mackelvie (1824-1885) and the the brewer Moss Davis (1847-1933), there are few extant examples of nineteenth century sculpture to be found in Auckland, at least in the city's public spaces. Those meagre pieces garnishing the local landscape tend to depict nineteenth century worthies such as Queen Victoria (F J Williamson, 1899), George Eden, first (and last) earl of Auckland (Henry Weeks, 1848), and George Grey (F J Williamson, 1904), and they're about as inspiring as a brick wall. However, amongst the respectable dross there are a few instances of the genre that rise above the banal. All are in less than optimum condition, suggesting that institutionally at least, Auckland is a casually neglectful steward of its public art. Three of the pieces have significant, if somewhat tangential, connections with the design - the production, mediation and consumption – of ceramics in New Zealand. All three are exemplars of the way in which British visual tropes became a part of New Zealand's cultural economy.

Gilbert Bayes (1872-1953) Fountain of the valkyries (c. 1912). Auckland Domain, gift of  Richard Hellaby, 1929

Gilbert Bayes' Fountain of the valkyries is one of these more remarkable examples of public sculpture to be found in the city. Prior to its acquisition by Richard Sydney Hellaby (1887-1971) – the self-exiled, artistic scion of an Auckland butchery chain – it had been exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1912 and, in 1917, reproduced – in colour – in the pre-eminent art journal of the time, the Studio. Hellaby studied at the Lambeth School of Art prior to World War I and may have been acquainted with Bayes, but the gift – of what to a metropolitan audience would have been by then a somewhat anachronistic work – appears to have been made to enhance the surroundings of the newly-opened Auckland War Memorial Museum, possibly more as a private war memorial – Hellaby had served with British forces during the war – than as an act of personal patronage.

Bayes was probably best known in New Zealand for his work as a designer of polychromatic architectural ceramics which, from the early 1920s, he designed for the Doulton Lambeth works. A selection of his architectural sculpture was exhibited by Doulton & Co at the Dunedin New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition in 1925-26. Other sculptural work also gave him a local profile: a bronze bas relief Jason ploughing the acres of Mars (1898) was exhibited at the Christchurch New Zealand International Exhibition in 1906-07 and purchased by the Canterbury Society of Arts; and a bronze and enamel figure St George and the dragon (1920) was also shown at the Dunedin exhibition  and subsequently acquired for the Dunedin Public Art Gallery. Bayes' work embodied early twentieth century British official taste: it was figurative but sufficiently stylised in its form to suggest a sense of progress; in its attention to detail and in its evident craftsmanship it made reference to the apogee of British cultural developments of the previous century, the arts and crafts movement. Moreover, Bayes' subjects were unquestionably patriotic - knights in armour were a common feature – deeming them appropriate for export to the provinces, for the delectation of middle-class colonial audiences.

Gilbert Bayes (1872-1953) Fountain of the Valkyries (1912) as illustrated in the Studio, 72 (1917), p. 105

While Bayes' sculptural fountain can be adduced as representative of official British art, the same cannot be said for one of the few examples of academy sculpture to be found in New Zealand, ‘Love breaking the sword of hate’ (1900), by the Anglo-Italian sculptor Andrea Carlo Lucchesi (1859-1925), located in Auckland's central Albert Park. Moreover, notwithstanding the inscription on its plinth, few are likely to associate it with George Boyd (1825-1886), an Irish-born Scottish brick maker and potter who worked in New Zealand from 1851 to 1885.

Inscription on the plinth of Lucchesi's Love breaking the sword of hate. This blandly municipal text fails to identify either the sculptor or the title of the statue

While Boyd's connection with the sculpture is restricted solely to the fact that it was acquired using funds bequeathed by his widow, Helen, it can be seen as metaphor for the way the cultural forms and technologies of Europe were transferred, appropriated and deployed by settler society at the colonial frontier. Indeed, Boyd was involved in the same process of cultural transfer, introducing not only technological and mechanical innovations but also new forms and shapes.

Frederick George Radcliffe, Albert Park Auckland (about 1903).The photograph shows Lucchesi's Love breaking the sword of hate shortly after it was installed. Other elements of the Boyd bequest, the 'outside vases', are also in evidence.
Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries (35-R137)

Boyd's early years in New Zealand are obscure but he appears on the Auckland Provincial electoral rolls from 1854 where he is recorded as a brickmaker although the identity of his employer is unknown. Around 1860 he set up his own brick and tile manufactory, the Newton Brick and Tile Works, on the eastern flank of the ridge forming Great North Road in Newton; the site is now partially occupied by Newton Central School.

James D Richardson [Looking towards Boyd's Pottery from Rendall Place] (about 1880).
Sir George Grey Special Collections, Auckland Libraries (4-254)

Boyd initially made bricks using clay sourced from the 10 acre (4.05 hectare) site 'for his own use, on account of the inferior quality then being sold in Auckland at the enormously high price of £7 to £8 per thousand.' <Auckland Star (11 November 1878), p. 3> Two years after setting up the works, he began producing field drain pipes and by 1864 was advertising sophisticated sanitary wares such as glazed drainpipes, garden tiles, chimney pipes and a variety of drain fittings that were able to compete with imported wares, notably those produced by Doulton & Co in Lambeth. This advance was presumably the consequence of his acquisition of a Clayton & Howlett extruding machine. Boyd was also experimenting with his ceramic bodies, including procuring clay from 'the Bay of Islands' for fire bricks <Daily Southern Cross (21 February 1873), p. 3> and in 1864 he sought letters patent for the 'exclusive right to prepare Powdered Scoria Stone, and Powdered Scoria Ash for the purpose of being used to compound Mortar, Cement, and Plaster, and in the manufacture of Bricks, Tiles, Drain-pipes, Sanitary-ware, and other ceramic productions.'<New Zealand Herald (31 August 1864), p. 2>  By the mid 1870s Boyd's pottery, by the known as The Newton Sanitary Pipe Works <Daily Southern Cross (9 November 1875), p. 3>, comprised 700 feet (over 200 metres) of sheds, two brick making machines, three pipe machines and three crushing machines all driven by a 12 horse power Robey & Co steam engine <Southern Cross. (9 November 1875), p. 3>, along with five large circular down draught kilns. The works employed some twelve workers and consumed about £500 worth of coal a year.

Title block of an advertisement for the Newton Pottery published in the New Zealand Herald  (27 June 1883), p. 2

The utilitarian nature of his early productions were, in part, supplanted by the production of 'fancy work' including ornamental stands and flower pots. Around 1878 Boyd appears to have imported a number of moulds for vases and, when he issued a Reference price list in 1882, he listed forty two shapes of vases, pots, brackets and pedestals, including a 28cm high 'Grecian vase for pottery decoration' and a 40.6 cm high bust of Shakespeare (priced at ten shillings). Boyd's most prestigious production, known as the 'Garnkirk Wedding Vase', was illustrated as the centrepiece of the title block for his 1883 advertisement in the New Zealand Herald. Designed by the Glasgow architect Alexander 'Greek' Thomson (1817-1875) for display by the Glasgow pottery Ferguson, Miller &Co at the Great Exhibition of 1851, the mould was acquired by another Scottish concern, the Garnkirk Fireclay Co and, sometime in the early 1880s a copy made its way to Auckland; it was one of two models from Garnkirk that are known to have been used by Boyd.

[Unidentified designer], majolica-glazed earthenware stand made at the Newton Pottery, Auckland (about 1885).
Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, gift of George Boyd (CG00639)

Boyd's industry and enterprise was recognised from the start. At the 1865 Dunedin New Zealand exhibition he was awarded an honorary certificate 'for drain pipes and tiles of good manufacture'; and by the time of the 1885 Wellington New Zealand Industrial Exhibition the Newton Pottery was so highly regarded that it was awarded First Prize for ornamental and household pottery. The jurors' observed that:

His fancy table-ware is especially handsome, some of the pitchers and vases on the stand being really beautiful, noticeably so one richly-relieved blue jug. Some copies of Wedgwood, in white on blue ground, are well made; and there is an exquisitely designed fruit stand representing storks supporting a dish [...] a really beautiful exhibit, and one of great value, as proving the existence of a real art-feeling in the manufacture of cheap and common goods.<New Zealand Industrial Exhibition, 1885, The official record (Wellington: Government Printer, 1886), p. 46>

Boyd was evidently so gratified by the reception of his wares that he gave four examples to the Colonial Museum. He did not enjoy his success for long; at the end of 1885 he appears to have been diagnosed with a fatal illness and in January 1887 advertised the factory 'to let for a term of years' noting that

The whole of the works are in first-class order, there are immense drying sheds; also steam-engine pipe machinery of every description, brick and tile presses, 2 brick machines and edge runners; also, six kilns of various construction suitable for every class of good. The town water and telephone are laid on to the works. Office, Show-Room, Carpenter's Shop, Stables, and an endless variety of plaster moulds; also common pottery clay in any quantity.<New Zealand Herald (4 January 1886), p. 1>

There do not appear to have been any takers  for what Boyd described as 'an opportunity seldom to be met with'. He died at his house on Nixon Street on 10 March 1886 aged 61, allegedly instructing his widow, Helen, to destroy 'the endless variety of plaster moulds'<G Henry, New Zealand pottery: commercial and collectable (Auckland: Reed, 1999), p. 140>. Local newspapers lauded him as 'an industrious, persevering man', 'most energetic in prosecuting the local industry with which his name was so long and honourably associated', noting that 'Deceased was a native of Scotland, and much respected for his integrity of character.'<'Obituary', New Zealand Herald (29 March 1886), p. 13>

[Unidentified designer], cold-painted earthenware urn made at the Newton Pottery (about 1885)
in Albert Park, Auckland. Bequeathed by Helen Boyd. One of the few remaining elements of her bequest  of  'outside vases'

Helen Boyd died on 30 September 1898 leaving a number of surprisingly generous legacies to the Auckland Institute and Museum and the Auckland Art Gallery. She also bequeathed 'a large number of outside vases for the Albert Park, and has desired her trustees to expend £1000 in the purchase in Italy, or elsewhere, of statuary, to be placed in the said park' <'Death of Mrs Helen Boyd: handsome bequests to the city', New Zealand Herald, 1 October 1898, p. 5>. This unexpected bequest – today's equivalent in terms of purchasing power would be about $1million –  prompted consternation at the Auckland City Council, however, by the end of the year, a sub-committee of the council was formed comprising Boyd's trustees and a handful of the local great and good.

The committee's initial decision was to split the bequest into four and send to Sydney, London, France and Italy for photographs of appropriate statues. In August 1899, evidently frustrated by a tardy response, the mayor decided to approach the newly formed Auckland Scenery Conservation Society seeking advice; the earlier decision was rescinded and it was resolved to seek expert advice as to the choice of subject from London.<'Auckland Scenery Conservation Society: meeting of the committee', New Zealand Herald (5 August 1899), p. 5> Letters from both the mayor and the Boyd trustees were sent to William Pember Reeves, the New Zealand Agent General in London, requesting him to 'place the matter before some sculptor of note in England (such as E Onslow Ford, RA, 62 Acacia Road, St John's Wood).'<New Zealand Herald (1 November 1899), p. 6> Edward Onslow Ford (1852-1901) – his massive St George and the dragon salt cellar is included in the Tate Britain exhibition – seems to have suggested that fewer rather than more statues be acquired and recommended not only that a work by Lucchesi be acquired but also one by the better known sculptor Alfred Drury (1856-1944). Drury's efforts seem to have gained him a reputation in the colony; in late 1902 – again through Pember Reeves – he was commissioned by the New Zealand premier Richard Seddon, on behalf of the citizens of Wellington, to produce a bronze statue of Queen Victoria along with three bronze relief panels to decorate the pedestal. Drury's formalised depiction of the signing of the Treaty of Waitangi, the subject of one of the pedestal panels, was reproduced, unacknowledged, on the New Zealand ten shilling note from 1940 to 1967.<A Lys Baldry, 'A notable sculptor: Alfred Drury ARA', Studio, 37 (1906), pp. 3-18>

Alfred Drury (1856-1944), Spring (1902), Auckland Domain, Auckland,
purchased with funds provided by the estate of Helen Boyd. Unidentified, relocated, demounted and unacknowledged.

The statues were commissioned with the New Zealand Herald  commenting enthusiastically – even if it consistently misspelt Lucchesi as 'Luchessi' – that 'These works of art will be a great adornment to Albert Park'<'Statuary for Albert Park', New Zealand Herald (29 August 1900), p. 4> Love breaking the sword of hate was installed in the park in January 1903 in its present position. Drury's Spring had suffered delays in its making 'owing to an accident to the clay model' but in March 1903 it was reported in the Auckland Star that it was to be' erected in the Albert Park at the end of this week near the entrance at Wellesley-street East<Auckland Star (25 March 1903), p. 4>. No images of the statue in its original location appear to have survived although, curiously, it is still extant, installed anonymously under a pergola at the Wintergarden in the Auckland Domain.

Both George Boyd and the trustees of Helen Boyd's estate chose to import their forms and models from Britain. Richard Hellaby had the means that enabled him to practice his art overseas, but all made significant contributions to the country's cultural inheritance. It's to our shame that these legacies have been so abused: neglected, damaged, uncared for and ignored. 

Mangōpare modernism

In 2009 the British Museum's Department of Prehistory and Europe purchased at the Alexandra Palace Antique and Collectors Fair in London an earthenware plate decorated with a coloured transfer-printed kōwhaiwhai (painted rafter decoration) border. This ‘Maori Art’ plate was fabricated at the Lambeth factory of the British ceramic manufacturer Doulton & Co in about 1925. It is currently on show at the museum in a display devoted to the emergence of modernism in Europe. Surrounded by the work of George Walton, Josef Olbrich, Henri van de Velde, Mikhael Adamovich and Marianne Brandt, the plate’s abstract design seems to have been deployed by the museum to exemplify the art historical trope that links the ‘primitive’ to the modern. The positioning of this apparently anonymously designed plate amongst these modernist archetypes seems to resonate with Evan Kindley's recent observation in the London Review of Books, that there's a fear amongst historians that they 'will slip into the comfortable grooves of "great man" narratives - a tendency to which scholars of modernism, always a congress of cults of personality, are particularly prone.'

Accompanying the plate is a label that, even accounting for the constraints imposed by its function and format, is not only notable for the absence of accurate information concerning the plate’s design, production and consumption but also for the revisionist perpective it provides on contemporary British views of the relationship that existed between between the colonising power and its colonial subjects.  The label reads as follows:

Earthenware plate with ‘Maori’ pattern

English, made by Doulton Pottery, Lambeth, London,

about 1925

Doulton’s first Maori designs were made for the 1906 New Zealand International Exhibition in Christchurch. This plate was made for the Dunedin Exhibition of 1925. The patterns based on those of a Maori meeting house (see room 24) may have been inspired by the decoration of the New Zealand pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition in Wembley in 1924.

The British Museum’s plate isn’t the first example of Doulton’s ‘Maori Art’ ware to enter a British collection: the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge has a bone china cup and saucer exhibiting the same pattern, fabricated at Doulton & Co’s Burslem factory about 1930, which it acquired by donation in 1993. While the Fitzwilliam’s on-line catalogue description again fails to describe the pattern accurately or to acknowledge its source, it does suggest that the pattern pre-dates the ‘decoration of the New Zealand pavilion at the British Empire Exhibition in Wembley’ by at least twenty odd years.

'Maori Art' bone china plate. Made by Doulton & Co, Burslem, England, about 1929

As has been previously observed on this blog, the design of the ‘Maori Art’ pattern was based on an illustration that reproduced twenty-nine kōwhaiwhai collected by the Anglican bishop Herbert Williams to accompany his chapter ‘Description of Maori rafter patterns’ published in Augustus Hamilton’s Māori Art (Dunedin: Ferguson and Mitchell for the New Zealand Institute, 1897). 

Albert Percy Godber, [Photograph of Māori rafter patterns 22-26 from Augustus Hamilton, Maori art'], 1916.
National Library of New Zealand, reference no. APG-0586-1/2-G

The Doulton pattern design most closely matches Williams' rafter pattern no. 25, Mangōpare (hammerhead shark), which he identified as coming from the wharenui named Tamatekapua (constructed in 1878) of the Ngāti Whakaue subtribes Ngāti Tae-o-Tū and Ngāti Tūnohopū, of the Te Arawa descent, at the Te Papaiouru Marae near Ōhinemutu. 

John Dobree Pascoe, 'Kōwhaiwhai on the rafters of Tamatekapua meeting house at Ohinemutu', [about 1940]
National Library of New Zealand, reference no. 1/4-001700-F

It is unclear how the Mangōpare design came to the attention of the art department at Doulton & Co’s Burslem factory, who were most probably responsible for producing the transfer plate used for the production of the first wares – in bone china – that carried the pattern. However, confusingly, the British Museum on-line catalogue description, presumably on the basis of information recorded in the 1909 registration of the design (537842), identifies the pattern as being the result of a collaboration between the Doulton Lambeth factory artist Francis Pope and its art director Joseph Mott.

Speculatively, Doulton's 'Maori Art' line may have resulted from an order placed by John Shorter, their Australasian agent. Resident in Australia since 1878, the Staffordshire-born Shorter, during the 1890s, became involved in the efforts of Richard T Baker, a graduate of the South Kensington Museum design training scheme and curator of the Technological Museum in Sydney, to promote the use of specifically Australian iconography in manufactured commodities destined for the Australian market. The idiom identified by Baker as being uniquely ‘Australian’ was its flora; Shorter’s embrace of the 'Australian flora in art' cause focused on the upper end of the market and included boldly painted porcelain and earthenware vases and plates. 

Doulton was not unique in its efforts to employ Australian iconography on products specifically identified for the local market. Other British manufacturers, such as Josiah Wedgwood & Sons, also produced Australian lines, although not so exclusively and not so visually effective. Wedgwood, for example, produced from around 1882 a cream-coloured earthenware ‘Australian flora’ range decorated with painted transfer prints probably derived from botanical monographs. The qualitative difference between the productions of the two British companies seems to lie in the work of an exiled French Communard painter Lucien Henry, resident in Sydney from the late 1880s until his death in 1896. Whether he realised his role or not, the Beaux Arts trained Henry effectively reconfigured visual perspectives of colonial markets; from the documentary to the aesthetic.

From the 1840s until the early 1980s, British ceramic manufacturers dominated the New Zealand tableware market. Their goods entered the country under preferential trade tariffs that subjected non-British competitors to a range of swingeing taxes and duties. They also had an unrivalled network of local agents, but, most significantly, it was their close relationship with the London-based distribution firms who, until the advent of readily available illustrated media, controlled the British export market and, effectively, determined what New Zealand consumers knew about and purchased.

This cartel-like network was reinforced during the three major exhibitions held in the country between 1865 and 1925 which included representative displays from a number of  major British ceramic manufacturers, under either their own name or that of selected retailers. At the 1865 New Zealand Exhibition held in Dunedin, Doulton & Watts, the predecessor of Doulton & Co, exhibited under its own name while Josiah Wedgwood & Sons was represented by the Bond Street ceramic retailers William P and George Phillips; Pinder Bourne, the predecessor company of what became Doulton & Co’s Burslem plant, were shown by a local agent, M Calvert of Dunedin.

Unidentified photographer, '[The British court at the New Zealand International Exhibition]', about 1906. While the overall quality of the British court was disappointing, the impressive Doulton stand was located at the rear of the court.
Christchurch City Libraries

The 1906-07 New Zealand International Exhibition held in Christchurch again saw British firms dominating the commercial displays of ceramics either in their own right or under the aegis of local agents. Doulton exhibited both in the British government's fine arts pavilion and in the commercial court; its wares forming a significant component of the display put together by a local retailer, John Bates & Co. James Cowan, editor of the exhibition record, declared in awed tones that the Doulton display was ‘the finest of all […] some of these masterpieces of the designer’s and potter’s arts, were priced as high as £500 each ($78,424 in today’s terms).’ (J Cowan, Official record of the New Zealand International Exhibition of arts and industries, held at Christchurch, 1906-7 (Wellington: Government Printer, 1910), p. 299).

'Kia-Ora Ware' stoneware jardiniere. Made by Doulton & Co, Lambeth, England, about 1930.
Christie's

Doulton & Co appear to have produced two lines specifically for the exhibition: ‘Maori Ware’ and ‘Maori Art’. ‘Maori Ware’, later re-labelled ‘Kia-Ora Ware’, was produced in salt-glazed stoneware at the Lambeth factory, notwithstanding the Auckland Museum's erroneous identification of it it as being produced in Burslem. Its decoration – which resembles more closely the work of Joseph Mott - consists of a series of contrastingly coloured reliefs, loosely based on Māori carving. ‘Maori Art’, by contrast, reproduced kōwhaiwhai with a degree of accuracy and was produced initially in bone china at Burslem. 

Unidentified photographer, 'Hongi at the inner pā at the New Zealand International Exhibition, Christchurch', [1906-07].
National Library of New Zealand, reference no. 1/1-022026-G

Doulton’s decision to deploy Māori-derived designs for its Christchurch display conformed to a wider cultural agenda. From the first of the great international exhibitions, the 1851 Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations, British colonial authorities and, later, New Zealand settler governments employed Māori cultural artefacts not only to promote the colony as a destination for immigration and, later, tourism but also to emphasise the country's difference from other outposts of empire. From the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition until the 1924-25 British Empire Exhibition, the scale of these displays of the taonga of ‘subjugated’ Māori expanded to include wharenui. Inspired by displays of colonised people at the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exhibition, a decision was made at the Christchurch exhibition to supplement a contrived display of indigenous material culture with Māori themselves. (B Kernot, ‘Māoriland metaphors and the model pā’, in Farewell colonialism: the New Zealand International Exhibition Christchurch, 1906-07, ed. by J M Thomson (Palmerston North: Dunmore, 1998), 61-78.) For Pākehā, Māori presence and symbolism at the exhibition served settler need for a unique identity and iterated a sense of hegemony over what was perceived of as a ‘dying race’. By appropriating the iconography of a culture that was not their own, the Doulton wares reinforced that Galtonian view.

The British Museum’s earthenware plate was apparently produced for the New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition held at Dunedin in 1925-26. The preeminent focus of the exhibition was the British government pavilion, organised by the British Department of Overseas Trade and the Federation of British Industry, both organisations legacies of pre-war Board of Trade attempts to reform British industry. It included: a ‘Hall of Empire’; an ‘Historical Relics Gallery, which included costume and electrotype reproductions of historical silver from the Victoria and Albert Museum, archaeological relics from the Guildhall Museum and models of British cathedrals lent by the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury Cathedral; Naval, Army and Air Force galleries; and an ‘Industrial Art Gallery’ organised by yet another Board of Trade initiative, the British Institute of Industrial Art.

Hugh & G K Neill, ' The Hall of Empire [in the British government pavilion at the New Zealand and South Seas Exhibition, Dunedin, 1925-26]'.
G E Thomson, Official record of the New Zealand and South Seas International Exhibition (Dunedin: Otago Master Printers' Association, [1926])

The over-riding sense conveyed by the exhibition generally was one of imperial recycling and Doulton & Co, rebranded in 1922 as ‘Royal Doulton’, entered into this zeitgeist by using the Dunedin exhibition to launch recycled Māori patterned wares: ‘Maori Art’, produced in earthenware at the failing Lambeth factory, was given a fashionable, buttery yellow ground. Contrary to the claims of the British Museum label, if any display in the New Zealand pavilion at the 1924-25 British Empire Exhibition at Wembley influenced the design of Doulton products it was probably the colour of  its ‘reasonably decent show of butter and cheese’, rather than its tokenist displays of decontextualised and misappropriated Māori art.

Fleetway Press Ltd, 'New Zealand pavilion British Empire Exhibition 1924'.
The only identifiable New Zealand-sourced items in this postcard view of the façade of the pavilion are the cabbage tree/tī kōuka (Cordyline australis) and the flax/harakeke (Phormium tenax) in the foreground garden

Archives and design history

Memorandum from George Laurence Watkinson, an assistant secretary at the British Board of Trade, relating to the formation of the design promotion body that emerged as the Council of Industrial Design in December 1944. The last entry on the page was made by Alix Kilroy as the principal responsible for the initiative. Board of Trade papers at the National Archives of the United Kingdom (BT 64/3384)

Pretty much every week the Professional Historians' Association of New Zealand/Aotearoa emails its members with lists supplied by Archives New Zealand of those public documents intended for disposal under the terms of the Public Records Act 2005. These lists are distributed in order to garner comments from interested parties and to prevent egregious destruction. It’s a long way from the situation prevailing up to the beginning of the century which saw government departments and agencies disposing of archives without reference to anyone. In fact the New Zealand government’s approach to its archives has been extraordinarily negligent; the most appalling example occurring in 1952 when a fire in an annex of the Hope Gibbons Building in Wellington consumed the ‘early’ records of the Departments of Public Works, Lands and Survey, Labour, Agriculture and Marine.

This rat from about 1830, with a stomach full of chewed document, was used by Henry Cole in evidence of the poor condition of the records. National Archives of the United Kingdom, ref: E 163/24/31

Such a situation is far from unique. The shocking condition under which public records were preserved in the United Kingdom prompted the formation in 1836 of a parliamentary select committee to probe the affairs of the Records Commission, the body then charged with their care and maintenance. The report of the committee not only excoriated the commission but also led to the formation of the British Public Records Office and, not coincidentally, launched the stellar career of its author, Henry Cole, as 'the great bureaucrat' of nineteenth century industrial arts. But, despite these reforms, the destruction of official archives continued. In her memoir of her life as a civil servant in the British Board of Trade, Alix Meynell (née Kilroy) ­­– best remembered to history for her role in forming the Council of Industrial Design during the Second World War ­– recalled that as a new recruit she was put to sorting through her department’s files at the end of the 1920s and, without any guidelines or indexes, recommending their destruction, expressing the ‘fear that my simplistic advice may have been acted upon’ (Alix Meynell, Public servant, private woman (1988), p. 97).

If the public service was negligent about its records, then the private sector was often and inevitably worse. Business records, once their commercial usefulness had expired, were systemically trashed. And those that were retained were often stored under the worst of all possible conditions, well into the 1980s and 1990s. It is only recently that the value of these holdings has been recognised, but for all the wrong reasons. As the great manufacturing concerns have collapsed into bankruptcy, inevitably brought on by speculative buyouts and other financial ploys, their receivers have been seeking to realise every possible asset, particularly when company pension funds are involved. The example of the Wedgwood Museum in Barlaston, Staffordshire, which is currently making its way through the British legal system, is a case in point. The museum thought that, no matter the fate of its founding company, Josiah Wedgwood & Sons (which over the past decade absorbed Doulton & Co Ltd, which, in turn had absorbed Minton's Ltd), it was, as an independent trust, safe from depredation. The courts disagreed, interpreting the Pension Act 1995 as making the museum chargeable for the founding company’s pension indebtedness. As a result it's entirely possible that these collections and their associated remaining archives will be sent to Sotheby's in atonement for the sins of the speculators who had already trashed what they hadn't created.

 

Decorative metalwork awning designed and made by Wunderlich Limited for Farmer and Company Limited's department store in King Street, Sydney, New South Wales. E A Bradford, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, 1920s. Photographic print from the Powerhouse Museum, Wunderlich Ltd Archive Collection, A7437-28/113

The shenanigans currently surrounding the Wedgwood Museum have their roots in the collapse of commodity manufacturing during the 1980s which affected companies around the world. In Australia, Wunderlich Ltd, inter alia, manufacturers of tiles and pressed ceiling panels, was closed by its owner, the Colonial Sugar Refinery Co Ltd (CSR) in 1979 and its Redfern factory abandoned. It was somewhat serendipitous that the firm’s closure coincided with a decision by the University of Sydney’s Department of Archaeology to launch a course in historical archaeology. Students from the course, together with curatorial staff from Sydney’s Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, undertook the colossal task of retrieving and preserving the company’s paper archives along with a significant tranche of moulds, pattern stamps, samples and the like. These are now held at the Powerhouse Museum and while not displayed are publicly accessible.

In New Zealand things have been no better. The archive of the pottery manufacturers Ambrico/Crown Lynn/Ceramco was quite literally abandoned when the company turned from being a ceramic manufactory into a speculative concern and closed its New Lynn factory. Much was retrieved thanks to the indefatigable work of the late Richard Quinn who collected files, reports, advertisements, production schedules and the like as the factory was demolished in 1989. After protracted and disputatious negotiations this material is now preserved by the Portage Ceramics Trust and in the library of the Auckland Museum.

But for all the archives that have been saved, a far greater proportion have been lost, often due to ignorance and a failure to understand the way that commodities are manufactured, distributed and mediated. Historically, greater significance has always been attributed to the role played by manufacturers, presumably on the basis that their place in the hierarchies of production was the most readily identifiable. But this attribution reflects a flawed way of looking at the processes of material culture history because it assumes both that manufacturers operate in an hermetic environment and that the manufacture of commodities is a one-way process from manufacturer to consumer, which, of course, they don’t and it isn’t.

A case in point can be made with the production of ceramics made for the New Zealand market by the British manufacturer Doulton & Co. The company was probably one of the most important suppliers of ceramic goods to New Zealand during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: in the 1860s its stoneware sewer pipes (made at its Lambeth factory) were specified by the richer New Zealand municipalities and, from the mid 1880s, the company became one of the leading suppliers of table and ornamental wares (made both at Lambeth and its newly acquired  Stoke-on-Trent works) to New Zealand consumers.  The man primarily responsible for this market capture was Doulton’s agent in Sydney, John Shorter (1853-1942) who, from the mid 1890s, was responsible for the New Zealand market.

John Shorter about 1930 

Shorter, who was Staffordshire born, was sent out by Doulton & Co to install its display at the 1879 Sydney International Exhibition. One of Shorter’s more interesting ways of activating the high end of the local market – one that was emulated by any number of British ceramic manufacturers – was to send paintings of local flora (Miss Ada Rutherford of Bathurst was his favoured supplier of designs) to be copied onto standard forms by china painters in the Doulton factories. This initiative developed from Shorter’s collaboration with Richard Baker, curator of the Sydney Technological Museum, who adhered to an idea first proposed by the ex-Communard painter Lucien Henry that ‘a national art form’ must develop out of the applied arts and that the best way of achieving this was to seek inspiration in nature.

New Zealand 1d postage stamp commemorating the New Zealand Exhibition of Arts and Industries from 1906. The first commemorative issue and the first to be entirely designed, engraved and printed in New Zealand

Shorter followed the same rationale in preparing Doulton’s exhibit at the 1906-07 Christchurch New Zealand International Exhibition of Arts and Industries. But for this occasion he picked up on one of the theme of  the exhibition, its presentation of what might be described as ‘Māoriness’, a Pākehā vision of a Māori culture that was at once patronising, demeaning and inaccurate, but entirely consistent with the prevailing treatment of non-European cultures at international exhibitions. It seems that on Shorter’s direction, Doulton produced two lines for the exhibition - alongside a range of cheaper souvenir wares: ‘Māori Art’ and ‘Māori Ware’. The former design was based on an illustration in Augustus Hamilton’s 1897 Māori Art of kōwhaiwhai collected by HW Williams in the east of the North Island during the early 1890s.

Transfer-printed and painted porcelain dinner plate 
from the Doulton ‘Māori Art’ service, designed about 1906

Verso of the plate. Impressed marks indicate
the blank was produced in 1928

But this Australian connection has been lost from the received history of design in New Zealand. In 1979, nearly three quarters of a century after the design was conceived, John Shorter Pty Ltd lost the Doulton agency and in 1982 John Shorter’s grandson, another John Shorter died and the company ceased its trade in ceramics. The significance of the company’s archive was not recognised and, like the greater part of the Doulton archive in England, it was destroyed. The consequence of this absence of documentation has prompted a number of myths relating to the ‘Māori Art’ design: the general editor of Te Ara, the official encyclopedia of New Zealand, Jock Phillips, has asserted that it was designed in the 1920s. And in his biography of Āpirana Ngata, Ranginui Walker states that the pattern was ‘commissioned to be made in England’ by Ngata and that it was ‘a cultural statement that Māori decorative art and design had a place in the modern world’ (Ranginui Walker, He tipua: the life and times of Sir Āpirana Ngata (2001), p. 165).

It was indeed a cultural statement; but while Ngata may have ordered a ‘Māori Art’ service and it was appropriately decorated with a design possibly based on a Ngāti Porou kōwhaiwhai - Ngata belonged to that iwi confederation - the statement was most probably made by an Australian-domiciled Englishman; it was a statement of colonialism. Unfortunately, as a result of the destruction of the relevant archives, we will probably never know for certain if the application of the design was the harbinger of a cultural shift or the result of commercial pragmatism.