William Merric Boyd (commonly called Merric) was born in St Kilda on 24 June 1888, the second son of the artists Arthur Merric Boyd and Emma Minnie à Beckett Boyd. His siblings were Gilbert, Martin (novelist), Penleigh (artist), and Helen (artist). Merric first attempted a career as a farmer, and then enrolled in theological studies to be an Anglican priest before studying at the National Gallery School. He turned to pottery after experimenting at Archibald McNair’s Burnley Pottery in about 1910. In 1911 he exhibited a modelled bust of his future wife, the painter Doris Gough, at the Victorian Society of Artists. They married in 1915 and their first child, Lucy, was born a year later. From 1912 to 1914 he worked at the Australian Porcelain Insulator works while he refined his pottery technique.
In 1913 he established his pottery at Open Country, a house bought for him by his parents in rural Murrumbeena. He sourced his clay from a pit he dug in the garden. Doris painted decorations on his pots.
In 1917 Merric Boyd enlisted as an air mechanic in the Australian Flying Corps, and after initial training was sent to England. At the end of the War he stayed in England under an Army Education Rehabilitation Scheme to study pottery. He gave pottery classes to returning soldiers on his way home.
Once he was back in Victoria he exhibited with the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria and the NSW Society of Arts and Crafts.
A son, Arthur, was born in 1920, followed by Guy (1923), David (1924) and Mary (1926). Soon after his return to Australia he converted to Doris Boyd’s deeply held Christian Science faith. Stories from the Bible coloured the childhood of all the Boyd children.
In 1926 the pottery at Open Country was destroyed by fire, and at the same time he was increasingly troubled by his epilepsy. He spent some months teaching pottery at the New England Girls’ Grammar School in Armidale, NSW, but returned as soon as he could to a new pottery at Murrumbeena. He was achieving significant success with his innovative design and in 1929 was commissioned to make a vase for the visiting ballerina, Anna Pavlova which he made in a neoclassical style, quoting Wedgewood.
The Great Depression was not kind to studio pottery, but by 1934 he started a joint venture with John Crowe of the Australian Porcelain Company, making 'Cruffel Art Porcelain’.
As Merric’s health declined his son Arthur and son-in-law John Perceval took over the day to day operation of the pottery and fired Merric’s pots. In his later years he drew and modelled small figures.
He died at Murrumbeena on 19 September, 1959.
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
Joanna Mendelssohn
- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2012
