The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 49 No 3 November 2010

Marea Gazzard, Two Containers, 1959
Photo: Don Gazzard
Giurgola, one of the architects of the new Australian Parliament House. This article, first published in
1984 and now reprinted in this issue of The Journal of Australian Ceramics, gives an insight into how
one of this country's leading architects sought to incorporate the work of Australian craftspeople into
the very fabric of this important building (if that isn't mixing metaphors) right from the planning stages. '
On a more intimate scale, the interiors of 1960s architect-designed modernist houses, with an
emphasis on natural surfaces largely free from overt ornamentation, provide a wonderful setting for
ceramics of the period. There is a certain 'rightness' in seeing stoneware ceramics displayed in this
setting, whether as tiles, functional pottery or decorator pieces.
For example, in the ceramics of Marea Gazzard one sees a soph isticated take on the vessel as
domestic sculpture. Before studying in Europe in the 1950s, Marea Gazzard, who was married to the
architect Don Gazzard, had been exposed to the work of avant-garde British ceramic artists like Lucie
Rie in the pages of influential architectural magazines like Domus. In England she had contact with Rie,
as well as with the work of the artists Nicholas Vergette and Ha ns Coper, and it was Coper's work in
particular that deeply informed Gazzard's ceramics on her return to Australia in 1960.
At the time, only a few Australian potters were experimenting with forms beyond the purely
functional. It is true that many potters had made smaller scale sculptural pieces - John Percival's famous
Angel works are a good example - but it is a mistake to confuse this work with ceramics which have a
more direct connection to architecture.
These connections are sometimes obvious, as in the incorporation of ceramics into a building or
its surrounds; at other times they are more indirect. Sometimes it is just a question of scale, as when
the Austrian-born sculptor Bert Flugelman collaborated with Les Blakebrough on large scale ceramic
sculptures that were made and subsequently exhibited at the Sturt Workshops in Mittagong. To pick a
20 THE JOURNAL Of AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS NOVEMBER 2010