potter and painter, was born in Geelong, Victoria, where her father was a bank manager. The family could be described as having artistic connections: Sir Edward Poynter, President of the Royal Academy in 1897, was a cousin and through him the family was distantly related to Sir Edward Burne-Jones. Her father and one of her sisters also painted.
Poynter was brought up in Geelong. In about 1910 she went to London and studied painting at the Slade School, followed by pottery at the Kingston-on-Thames School of Art in 1913. During World War I she worked as a VAD, but became ill and returned to Australia in 1918 to live with her father. After his death, she moved to Tasmania to stay with her married sister, Mrs Reid of Ratho, outside Bothwell. The Reids let Maude have a small plot of land on the Ratho estate where, using some of her small private income and with the help of a local carpenter, she built a cottage and a large wood-fired kiln. After experimenting with local clays and finding that the results did not justify the effort, Poynter bought her clays from Campbell’s Pottery in Launceston. Her glazes were imported from Wenzer’s at Stoke-on-Trent, England. The kiln took about twelve hours to fire and the pots were usually fired in saggars.
As early as 1919 Poynter exhibited large quantities of her pottery with the Arts and Crafts Society of Tasmania and attracted favourable notice, particularly as she was the first person to do so. During the 1920s she exhibited her pottery regularly with the Society and sold it through Sargison’s jewellery shop and Jean Spong’s Art Salon. At the same time she consistently showed paintings, usually landscapes, with the Art Society of Tasmania. At Ratho Poynter taught pottery to her cousin Violet Mace and to local women. In 1924 she and Violet held a joint exhibition of pottery at the Hobart Town Hall, which included demonstrations of throwing by Maude.
In 1928 Maude returned overseas in order to visit the art centres of Europe. In 1935, not long after this photograph was taken, she moved to Hobart where she continued working with a small electric kiln, taught at New Norfolk and took a few private pupils. One of them, Mylie Peppin, opened a pottery at Port Arthur in the 1990s named in memory of her teacher.
Maude Poynter’s pottery was distinguished by a sturdy utilitarian quality, relieved by a taste for the bizarre or a whimsical humour. Her interesting Bird Jug , dated 1932, is characteristic of her most imaginative work. It has been wheel-thrown from a buff earthenware body then modelled by hand. The large lip has been built out and curved downwards to resemble a bird’s beak, balanced by the large handle. The zoomorphic effect is enhanced by the eyes painted on each side with a modelled pupil in relief. The jug is decorated with dark tan glaze in the interior, while the exterior has been divided into geometric fields painted in dark or light tan or the thick blue glaze Poynter favoured, or in some cases left in the natural buff body and covered with a clear glaze. Each field is delineated with a black line, which also defines the eyes and emphasises the continuity of the beak, rim and curve of the handle.
The scheme of decoration was bold for the time in terms of its abstraction. It is also of particular interest as it was almost certainly intended to represent Aboriginal motifs. A contemporary article on the use of Aboriginal art had featured feather-like designs similar to that employed around the rim of the jug, while the colours used were probably meant to evoke those used in Aboriginal art or, possibly, in the landscape itself. The same article had also remarked that `in one or two instances aboriginal subjects have been drawn on jugs with excellent results’.
Although the use of Australian motifs was commonplace in craftwork of the period, this is an early example of looking to the art of the indigenous Australians rather than to flora or fauna for inspiration. It is certainly one of the earliest Tasmanian specimens of studio pottery to employ such motifs.
- Writers:
- Miley, Caroline
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 2011
