Portage Ceramics Trust collection

The Portage Ceramics Trust was formed in 2005, in order to purchase and catalogue a large private collection of ceramics and pottery-making equipment. This collection relates to Crown Lynn Potteries Limited, a highly successful New Zealand company which operated from 1948 until 1989. Their products were in virtually every New Zealand home.

The Trust has contracted a Collection manager and registration team to catalogue the collection of approximately 6000 objects plus an archive. 2008 is the first year of the project, which is expected to take two or three years.

The Crown Lynn collection is very broad and represents the materials, styles, and techniques employed by the company. For example, it may contain a plaster cast of a particular shape, the mould it was cast from, a bisque example, and a glazed example. As well as that, the archive may contain a photograph of the item, or an entry in a price list or catalogue. Around half of the 6000 objects are the finished result of the process, and the rest are the tools, equipment, moulds and plaster models used to create them.

The Portage Ceramics Trust was anxious to ensure that the collection remained as close as possible to the New Lynn site where Crown Lynn operated, and a home has been found there for the collection and staff. As the focus is on documenting the collection as quickly as possible, the team is not accepting any research enquiries or acquisitions. Eventually it is hoped the collection will be housed in a museum, but in the short term exhibitions are planned in other venues. The twenty items seen here give a snapshot of the collection catalogued thus far.