Collection: Henning Rathjen (Australia)
Henning Rathjen established his pottery studio in Melbourne in 1948, becoming part of a generation of Australian makers responding to the demand for locally produced ceramics after the Second World War. With imported wares disrupted by the war and its aftermath, these businesses helped shape a distinctive post-war domestic design landscape.
Rathjen’s studio specialised in slip-cast ceramics. This method uses liquid clay and moulds to produce repeatable forms, allowing a small pottery to combine an identifiable range of shapes with considerable variation in finish. His work should therefore be understood within the history of commercial art pottery rather than described indiscriminately as hand-thrown studio ware.
Over the following two decades, the pottery moved beyond familiar 1940s treatments such as applied flowers, incised decoration and textured surfaces. Rathjen developed more unusual shapes and experimented with different glazes, including flamboyant colour contrasts. That progression is an important part of the appeal of his work: the name encompasses a developing body of production rather than one uniform style.
He sold the studio in 1968, shortly before his death later that year. His ceramics remain part of the story of Melbourne’s post-war art pottery, where moulded production and adventurous glazing could sit comfortably together. For ceramic lamps, the pottery attribution concerns the ceramic component; shades, electrical fittings and subsequent restoration need to be considered separately and are described with each individual piece.
Read more in the Australiana Society’s study of Rathjen.
