Castle Harris Pottery Vase with Dragon Motif
Castle Harris pottery vase with applied dragon, glazed in green, blue and yellow, incised 'Castle Harris', 8.27 in. high, 8.27 in. wide. John Castle (Jack) Harris (1893-1967) was born in May 1893 at North Waratah, New South Wales. Nothing is known his education or formal training in the arts. In the 1920s he was known professionally as Castle Harris and made a living from the sale of his and embossed leather tablecloths, which often incorporated Australian floral motifs. In the early 1930s Harris had lessons in clay modelling from Una Deerbon (1882-1972); on a visit to Melbourne in 1935, he worked briefly and informally at the Deerbon Pottery school and was employed at the Premier Pottery at Preston. Harris had a studio in hunter Street, Sydney, in 1939 and 1940, and another at Toongabbie in the mid-1940s. He seems to have had no time for contemporary, earthy, handicraft ideals or for the 'Accepted notion that handcrafted objects should be useful'. Often large, heavily decorated and frequently sculptural, his ceramics featured Australian and grotesque animals, and showed a strong Oriental influence. 1946 Harris shifted to the blue mountains and established a studio at Wentworth Falls. He later moved to Lawson where he continued his work.
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- Embossed / Repousse - Embossing, also known as repousse, is the technique of decorating metal with raised designs, by pressing or beating out the design from the reverse side of the object.It is the opposite of chasing, where the decoration is applied from the front. An embossed or repoussed object may have chasing applied to finish off the design.
- Incised - A record of a name, date or inscription, or a decoration scratched into a surface, usually of a glass or ceramic item with a blunt instrument to make a coarse indentation. Compare with engraving where the surface is cut with a sharp instrument such as a metal needle or rotating tool to achieve a fine indentation.
- Grotesque - Grotesque decoration is any fanciful ornament applied to furniture and decorative arts, and includes distorted faces, mythical animals such as satyrs and sphinxes and less frequently fantastical fruit and flower forms.
The Martin Brothers who set up their pottery at the end of the nineteenth century in Southall, Middlesex derived their fame from their hand made models of grotesque stoneware birds.
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