Australian Pottery of the 19th & Early 20th Century
Australian History Reference Crafts & Hobbies Antiques & Collectibles Art Pottery 19th Century History 20th Century History
Collectors prize this 1979 first-edition hardcover of Marjorie Graham’s Australian Pottery of the 19th & Early 20th Century because it remains the only dedicated survey of Australia’s pioneering ceramic studios—Bendigo Pottery, Lithgow, Hoffman, and dozens of tiny regional kilns that disappeared more than a century ago. Graham spent five years visiting country museums, auction rooms and descendants of potters to document shapes, glazes, back-stamps and makers’ marks, so the book is both a historical narrative and a working identification guide. More than 250 crisp black-and-white photographs let you flip straight to a found piece and compare base marks, while the indexed appendices translate every known impressed or printed stamp into firm dates and factory names.
What makes this copy especially appealing is its untouched, tightly-bound interior: no inscriptions, no dog-eared pages, and no underlining to distract from the reference value. The original dust-jacket shows only light shelf scuffing, so the handsome navy boards beneath are still bright, and the 1970s typography on the spine looks striking on a collector’s shelf. Because the title was printed in a small academic run by Sydney’s David Ell Press and never re-issued, clean first editions in protective jackets have become scarce in the secondary market.
Whether you are an antiques dealer, heritage potter, or family historian trying to date a hand-me-down crock, owning this vintage textbook gives you the same authoritative data relied on by Australia’s major auction houses. Keywords such as “Australian pottery identification,” “19th century Bendigo stoneware,” or “early Lithgow bottle kilns” all lead back to Graham’s pages, so keeping a copy beside you at flea-markets and estate sales can turn a $10 unmarked bean pot into a catalogued—and valuable—piece of colonial craftsmanship.
Refer to our eBay listing for a full condition report and many more high-quality pictures of this item.
Buy Now