The background

During the years of excavation at Crown Lynn sites Richard Quinn found hundreds of shards of Kienhua ginger jars in a variety of colours. In one of the many discussions he had with Tom Clark Tom confirmed that he'd made them. Tom also told Gail Lambert/Henry that he'd made a blue ginger jar.

The buckets of shards are now with the Portage Ceramics Trust and later research may determine the complete range of colours manufactured.

http://www.nzmuseums.co.nz/index.php?option=com_nstp&task=showAccountDetail&accountIdSet=3384&Itemid=23

Very polarised views on this particular Crown Lynn product have been held by people without access to the available evidence. The published history of Crown Lynn relying heavily on oral history has many examples of contradictory statements and beliefs that are not supported or often contradicted by physical evidence.

Hopefully professional study of the Portage collection will result in a research-based body of knowledge about the company, its forebears and its many products.

The Portage Ceramics Trust lodged an Application for Incorporation as a Charitable Trust on the 23rd of July 2008. The document lists the trust board members as Timothy Livingstone, Lorraine Wilson, Sherry Reynolds, Brian Lythe and Gregory Presland.

Val Monks book estimates the tiki with three stars backstamp
to be between 1945 and 1955.
I would suggest the ginger jars would have been made in the early part of the estimate -
due to the colour of the clay.

By the way the 51 Jug/Vase that I got yesterday...
was made with a very similar clay to the ginger jar I have.
It is a yellowy putty looking colour.
I only have these two pieces that are really old...
all the rest are made from very white clay.