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Mabel'
Bedroom Studio Mabel used her bedroom at "Braemar" as a studio for her pottery, china painting, poker work ("pyrography") and other craft activities. Mabel's brother (Charles) Gordon brought his young daughter Helen back to live at Braemar for several years (1927-1930 approx) after the death of Helen's mother, Madge. Helen remembers Aunty Mabel asking road workers in Lindsay Street for clay from their excavations (RJL-3, brown vase made from Braemar clay). Mabel helped Helen make some small pots during her time at Braemar. Helen also recalls trips with Mabel to the city to drop off and collect pots from the Craft Society's rooms where some of Mabel's work was fired. Other work was fired by arrangement at the kilns of R. Fowler & Sons. On one occasion she had trouble with the blue glaze and the kiln results were not what she expected. On another occasion, a pair of "lotus" pots (RJL-6) "backfired". Mabel imported glazes from overseas.[Go to top] Design Education and Pottery Techniques Mabel attended Sydney Technical College from 1909 to 1911 where she studied flower painting with A.G.Reid, a former student of Lucien Henry, and china painting under J. Arthur Peach. Although her interest in ceramics soon shifted to pottery, she retained an interest in painting and many of her pots have painted decoration (eg HJL-5). In 1920 she returned to Sydney Technical College, studying design, pottery and pottery design between 1920 and 1923. In 1927 she enrolled in the Intermediate Art Course at East Sydney Technical College and she took a further course in pottery there in 1928. Mabel's pots mostly took the form of vases, jugs and bowls. Some pots were angular in shape with underglaze decoration using Egyptian motifs, others feature Australian flora or fauna rendered in Art Nouveau style. Some vases are underglaze decorated with stylised forest friezes (eg. HJL-1) some have slip decoration under a clear glaze and one large vase has applied modelled decoration of gum leaves and gumnuts (HJL-2). Mabel didn't use a wheel, but had plaster of Paris moulds, each in two halves and used these to shape her pots. The Kookaburra vase, 1917 (HJL-5) is identical in shape to a vase photographed in a 1925 article on the work of Mrs Vi Eyre, who prosed Mabel for membership of The Society of Arts and Crafts. It seems likely that potters in the society shared moulds on occasions. Mabel imported glazes from overseas and experimented with locally dug clay.[Go to top] Work held by Public Galleries. Art Gallery of New South Wales: Lotus Vase
c1929 186cm high (14.5 dia) National Gallery of Australia: Parliament House Vase 1928 shown at the 1928 Society of Arts and Crafts Exhibition - see above (donated by Robert Lesslie); Penguin Vase c. 1920 (donated by Russell Lesslie - see above) Power House Museum: The Trustees of the Technological Museum (now the Power House Museum) purchased a two handled vase at The Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW annual exhibition in 1927.[Go to top] Mrs
Vi Eyre “A potters studio is a most work-shop-looking place, with innumerable moulds and buckets filled with clays in various stages of preparation. The potter needs a fair amount of physical strength to juggle the heavy moulds, and Vi Eyre makes and designs all her own. “At present, however, she is working on a method in which she models her articles into shape with tools and fingers. Much of the colour is put into the clay when it is being prepared, but the artist’s brush does a lot before the model goes to the kiln; and then, if a satisfactory result is not obtained the brush comes into play again, and the piece has to go through the china baking process. “’The potter has a much more anxious time than the china painter,’ says Mrs Eyre, and she knows because she is as expert at china craft as at pottery. ‘One never knows what is going to happen in the kiln, particularly when a high glaze is desirable. It is not rare for a piece, on which a week of care and thought has been expended, to come out all lined and spluttered – absolutely spoiled.’ ’“The most exquisite blues and the richest browns are notable in Vi Eyre’s pottery, and her wealth of decoration is unlimited…. Her inlaid clays mostly favour bush fauna…but she also shows fine examples of native flora…. Mrs Eyre’s admirers claim that she is the foremost of Australian potters, if only for the fact that she was the first to introduce inlaid designs into Australian pottery.” Mabel used all the tequniques desribed by Mrs Eyre - moulding, hand modeling and inlaid designs. She would no doubt have aslo concered with Mrs Eyre's comments on china painting as she too was an exponent of both crafts. [Go to top] |
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Catalogue of Earthenware by Mabel Lesslie Note: These catalogues include only the works retained by Mabel's neices and nephews and their descendants. We have no information on other works which Mabel may have sold at her many exhibitions.
Helen Leeder Collection Robyn
Leeder Collection Linda
Lesslie Collection Nola
Brice Collection
Russell Lesslie Collection Tom
Lesslie Collection Kate
Palethorpe Collection
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