Merric Boyd, Gumtree vase, 1931

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Merric Boyd
Australia
1888 – 1959

Gumtree vase
1931
porcelain

Place made: Murrumbeena, Victoria
Medium: porcelain
Dimensions: 20.4 x 13.9 cm (diam.)
Credit line: Gift of Blanche and Richard Koehne through the Art Gallery of South Australia Foundation 2022. Donated through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program.
Accession number: 20222C9
Signature and date: Signed and dated on base, "Merric Boyd / 1931".
Provenance: ...; (Marvin Hurnall, Melbourne); purchased 29 Novemeber 2005 by Blanche and Richard Koehne; gifted 2021 to AGSA.
Media category: Ceramic
Collection area: Australian decorative arts and design

Merric Boyd (1888-1959) is considered Australian’s first studio potter. Boyd studied at the National Gallery School in Melbourne, enrolling in the drawing school in 1910; drawing subsequently became a major part of Boyd’s output. In 1913 he settled at a property he named Open Country in Murreumbeena, Melbourne, where he set up his studio, and lived and worked for the rest of his life. In 1918, after war service, he attended pottery classes at the Stoke Technical School and in the following year attended pottery classes at the Stoke Technical College. Boyd returned to Open Country in 1919, and within a few years was established as the major studio potter in Melbourne.
Boyd's work in clay employed both wheel-throw and hand-built techniques and his pots often have a rugged, earthy quality. He fredquently included gum trees in both applied decoration and form as well as koalas and his work drew heavily on the Australian landscape.
Merric Boyd often employed the shape and form of the Australian eucalyptus trees in his pots. 'Gumtree vase' features an abstracted and contorted tree which wraps around the body of the vase. In this work the hand modelled decoration blends seamlessly with the painterly palette of the glaze with the limbs of the eucalyptus tree only formed around the very tip of the rim of the pot at the rear.