Still
worm, or whiskey
still, hand-thrown by
John Campbell for the
Tasmanian Exhibition
1891-1892. Salt-glazed
terra cotta, 97 cm
high.
Credit: Juliana and
Toby Hooper, A
Guide to Collecting
Australiana
(Macmillan Australia)
ISBN 0 7329 0222 3.
Majolica
urn on stand, hand
made and decorated by
John Campbell
c1880-1890. Glazed
earthenware, 66 cm
high.
Courtesy
of the Trustees of the
Museum of Applied Arts
and Sciences, Sydney
Below, typical
incised mark from
1930s John Campbell
artware.
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In
1902 Campbell’s
pottery became the
first industry in
Tasmania to use
electricity, changing
the business name from
‘Victorian and
Tasmanian Pottery and
Pipe Works’ to the
undeniably zippier ‘Campbell’s
Electric Pottery’.
Embracing new
technology, however,
seems not to have
become compulsory at
Campbell’s, for we
read that as late as
1956 Colin Campbell
(who took over
management after his
father’s death in
1928) was still making
all the pipe and
pottery deliveries in
a horse and cart.
John Campbell, born in
1857, was taken from
New Zealand to
Victoria as child, and
there apprenticed to
George Guthrie at Bendigo
pottery. He showed
exceptional talent at
the potter’s wheel
as a youth, winning
juvenile exhibition
medals for such
challenging objects as
hand-thrown whiskey
stills like the one
shown at left. He
moved to Tasmania
sometime around 1880,
and in 1881, bought Alfred
Cornwell’s
Launceston pottery
works, in the Sandhill
area near the McHugh
pottery. By the early
1890s, Campbell’s
was exhibiting a range
of pots and urns,
vases, teapots, cheese
dishes with covers,
jars, bottles and Toby
jugs.
Like McHugh’s,
Campbell’s employed
workers with
experience in
potteries on the
mainland, such as Bendigo,
Bennett’s,
and Cornwell’s.
Master craftsman like Denny
Beckett were
associated with both
McHugh’s and
Campbell’s.
There is
also some evidence of
John Campbell having
regularly obtained
specimens of the
high-quality wares
being produced at Bendigo
Pottery in the
mid-1880s from a
contact employed
there, in order to
make moulds from them
(for this story, see
Geoff Ford’s Australian
Pottery: The First 100
Years).
Although
competition among
Australian potteries
was always very keen,
and there are plenty
of examples of
price-cutting and ‘industrial
espionage’ to be
found in the
record-books, Campbell’s
and McHugh’s often
worked together
cooperatively to share
the available work,
equipment, and skilled
workers to mutual
advantage. A descendant
of John McHugh
relates that when
McHugh was found dead
in his pottery works,
John Campbell came
over and helped keep
the business running
until the McHugh
family could make
other arrangements.
Although heavy clay
products like pipe and
bricks were the
mainstay of the
business, it was
hand-thrown decorative
pottery that
fascinated John
Campbell, who even in
his old age spent late
nights in his workshop
experimenting with
shapes and glazes.
After his death in
1929, the business was
run by his son Colin,
who would have
overseen production of
the 1930s art wares in
this collection, and
then by other family
members.
Officially, Campbell’s
artware department
closed in 1947,
although there is a
classic ’thirties-style
vase in this
collection signed and
dated 1949.
The
factory doors closed
for the last time in
1976.
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