Bendigo Pottery

Photo from John....

I went to this pottery on the way to Hanging Rock before it closed so have a soft spot when it comes to Bendigo, who have a long pottery history. The salt glaze kilns were fantastic and the showroom was ever so hard to choose from! My husband worked for Ferro Australia who supplied Bendigo with glaze materials for their domestic ware and would come home with samples from their latest experiments .... and I'm still using Bendigo mugs from that era even though some are chipped they are the absolute perfect mug to me! [Mine were pretty ok too lolz] This vase appears to have had an iron wash put on it before the firing and the salt glaze isn't obvious .... but the warm glow from the salt firing is magnificent ... but hard to capture on camera. Love you Bendigo

Tony has informed me that Bendigo Potteries are still going strong....
Perhaps what I heard was the salt kilns have closed ???  Can't see any salt glazing on their site ....

http://www.bendigopottery.com.au/index.asp

Hi, new to the forum, about Bendigo Pottery, yes it is still around, you can visit the pottery. was there a few months ago. Salt Glazing was banned years ago because of the poisonous fumes released in the firing process, ceased in the eighties. no large scale production of salt glazes any more though some studio potters still do it.
cheers
Barb

I had to get this off eBay last week:

Bravo Tony *Claps*
So did Bendigo start making pottery in Oz in 1853/8??? Woop Woop!

Look up ^ at John's 150th Anniversary mug. I'm sure the Bendigo site use to have more historical info in it but I can't find it now

Fresh out of the mailbox via eBay:

A Bendigo Potteries Postcard ..... Awesome Tony

The captions on the back say: BENDIGO POTTERY (1857) EPSOM
Master potter throwing wine barrels.
The interior of an 1890 Bottle Kiln.
National Trust "C" classified Stables Gallery and Museum.
The interior of the Stables Gallery.

Can you work out when the photos were taken?
My guess is 1950's - 1960's ??

another postcard:


On the back: "Bendigo Pottery (1857 Epsom) The 1880 Bottle Kiln on full fire with wood and coal - 1250 [degrees] C"

The base ..

The Bendigo stamp ..

Scored this delightful piece of Bendigo Pottery the other day just a delight to hold and behold. Found a site with all the marks and this was thrown by a Terence Emond
who worked there from September 1978 to 1980 according to a site I found.
The piece is made in porcelain rather than stoneware but curiously the glaze colours are an exact match for my favourite morning tea/s mug from Crown Lynn a 1043 shape. I presume the number 90 on one of the two backstamps refers to the 90th of this shape that the potter has made and it would have been one of the last pieces that he did make as he left in 1980 and bottle is branded 1981, indicating to me that it was branded and fired after he had left.