The National Museum of Australian Pottery is located in the town of
Holbrook, New South Wales
Holbrook is a small town in Southern New South Wales, Australia. It is on the Hume Highway, by road North-East of Melbourne and by road south-west of Sydney between Tarcutta and Albury. The town is in the Greater Hume Shire which was establish ...
. It holds over 2000 pieces of domestic Australian pottery made in the 19th and early 20th centuries. The pieces in the collection were made by more than 130 Australian potteries and includes items such as tea pots, jugs, water filters, spruce and ginger beer bottles, along with a large variety of colourful and decorative pieces.
The museum includes work by the convict potter,
Jonathon Leak (1777-1838).
Leak's pieces are the earliest marked pieces of Australian pottery.
Many of the Leak pieces on display were recovered from a clay pit in
Sydney during an archaeological dig in 2007.
[
The museum opened in ]Wodonga, Victoria
Wodonga
( Waywurru: ''Wordonga'') is a city on the Victorian side of the border with New South Wales, north-east of Melbourne, Australia. It is located wholly within the boundaries of the City of Wodonga LGA. Its population is approximately 3 ...
in 1995, and moved to Holbrook in 2006. The museum building was originally a large department store built in 1910 for A. H. Mackie and Company. The owners and directors of the museum are Geoff and Kerrie Ford, who have been awarded the Order of Australia Medal for "service to the arts, particularly the study of early Australian pottery, and to the community." Ford has written several book on Australian pottery, including ''Australian Pottery: The first 100 years'' (1995), the ''Encyclopaedia of Australian Potter's Marks'' (1998)[
The National Museum of Australian Pottery also has an ongoing program of short-term exhibitions.
]
References
{{reflist
External links
National Museum of Australian Pottery website
Ceramics museums
Art museums and galleries in New South Wales