The Specials Department

Sometime in the 1920s the Clark family (Rice Owen Clark) amalgamated their family business with other potteries from Auckland and Wellington to become the Amalgamated Brick and Pipe Company. Their plant at Hobsonville had mainly produced pipeworks (1860s) but by 1906 were making salt glazed pots and urns, bread pans and storage jars as well as their core business of bricks and pipes.

In 1925 the Hobsonville operation was closed down and shifted to New Lynn which offered labour, a railway system and better clay.

Tom Clark entered the family business at age 14 during the depression years of the 1930s. Bricks and sewer pipes were the mainstay of the company.

Tom Clark identified a need for acid resistant tiles to be used in abbatoirs and dairy factories and in the early 1940s became involved in the manufacture of porcelain components for radios, stoves and hotwater cylinders.

In the late 1930s Tom Clark began experimenting with domestic ware and though production was small scale this changed quickly with the advent of World War II.

Originally known as the Porcelain Specialities Department by the mid 1940s the name was changed to Ambrico Ware.