The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 53 No 2 July 2014

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Tribute: Bob Connery
Ceramics by Bob Connery; the green and red open bowl (on the right) uses what was termed an 'envy green' base glaze.
Photos: courtesy Bob Connery's archive
A tribute by Andrew Stewart
I met Bob in 1977, back when he and Laine Langridge started Stokers Siding Pottery. They built a little
woodfired Dutch oven kiln and I used to come over and fire it with them. 50 began a long friendship
that was also a friendship with Julie, Mary Lee, all the kids, and the whole extended family and farm. In
fact, the interesting dynamic of extended families was something we had in common and my extended
family has woven in and out over the years too, including the seven years I was Bob's partner in the
pottery and lived upstairs.
Working alongside Bob, I became familiar with his moods, from occasional despondency and the wellknown
bellow when things went drastically wrong, to the much more frequent bouts of enthusiasm,
which sometimes were like a force of nature you just had to go along with. He loved music, food, wine
and sociability. But he could also be inward, driven and oblivious. He worked quickly with the easy
rhythm of a musician who plays with the freedom that comes only after lots of practice; he was also
always a meticulous craftsman.
I got to know his way of making pots well. I can pick Bob's pots the same way I might have picked
him out in a crowd. They have a 'Bobness' about them. I can see his familiar gestures and movements
as he made them. Handles, spouts, lids, rims, foot rings - they sprang from his fingers in a way that, to
me, is unmistakably Bob. His decoration energetically fills all the available space, just as his personality
would fill a room, whether it was a classroom or the Stokers Hall on New Year's Eve, playing with the
band.
Over the last couple of decades the two major themes in Bob's work were lustres and Japan. He first
became interested in pottery through Shigeo Shiga in Sydney in the sixties and Japanese ceramics were
always an inspiration. His first visit to Japan around 2000 was the beginning of a close relationship with
a group of potters there, mostly in the pottery village of Koishiwara in Kyushu.
In the early nineties Bob started working seriously on his reduced lustre pots, becoming a master of
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