Bennett Pottery

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[ Bennett history ]

This grey-blue majolica-glazed jardiniere, with the impressed mark of the W C Bennett Magill Pottery of Adelaide, probably predates the 1930s. Jars of similar shape were being made by Australian potteries at least as far back as the turn of the century. Still, the soft-toned glazes used on this pot look forward to the new decorative style.

   The remaining pieces here are representative of 1930s art-ware from the Adelaide pottery founded in 1887. All the shapes shown here were illustrated in a 1935 Bennett catalog, reproduced in Geoff Ford’s Australian Pottery: The First 100 Years. 
    The green vase and the rectangular flower trough, probably from the early ’30s, share an identical glaze, finely streaked with brown, and both, like the jardiniere, are fashioned from the red clay of Bennett’s Magill property.

    The trough, or ‘slab pot’, contains a detached perforated stem-holder, sometimes called an aide, in a matching glaze. Similar troughs were also made in the form of canoes.

   The green-footed vase with a creamy tan glaze flowing over the upper body is a pleasing example of Bennett’s mature 1930s artware.  This one has the sort of flowing inscription adopted by several pottery firms in the 1930s to signify a ‘handmade’ decorative object.

[ Bennett history ]