Kienhua green ginger jar

Another product from the 1940s was the Kienhua ginger jar which came in blue, red yellow and two greens:

...and now Ev will soon have hers and we can draw on a potters perspective as to the origin of the aforesaid ginger jar.... :?:

Got my ginger jar today....
at first glance my thoughts are that it isn't Crown Lynn...

1. The colour of the clay through the clear glaze on the bottom has a yellow tint.
2. The stilt marks on the bottom are right on the very edge of the pot.... in fact one has missed it's mark and has taken a piece of glaze with it. I haven't seen this before on Crown Lynn and wonder why they didn't use a smaller stilt?
3. There is no bare clay anywhere to compare with what I already have.... except where the stilt took some of the glaze with it.

I will study it some more later and add anything that I think is relevant.

Oh no, Ev! I hope this isn't going to be like my "pohutukawa" that isn't? What are stilts and stilt marks?

My guess is kiln furniture that keeps pieces off a flat surface? - that leave a mark if glaze gets on to them during the firing process? I might even have seen some - a y-shaped thing with pointed legs going up and down from each end of the Y?

I found a document last night in a CLP "Xmas Work" book that lists the expected shipments of supplies over one Christmas shutdown. It's handwritten and headed "Raw Materials etc Due During December 1975 and January 76". It has a column with what might be order, import or customs numbers; a description of the shipment eg "700KGM TR 2690 Green (Maiswann); Various Drums Colours (Blythes)" then the vessel name and lastly the date the ship is due in Auckland.

Some of the materials are Plaster, Silicone carbide, Rutile, Bi-silicate lead, Nephiline syenite, and Kaolin. Carborundum Ltd are delivering and clearing it.

I looked at this and thought a potter would know what those are.

I didn't see this before now Tony....
I want to spend more time studying this pot before I make any final decisions.
The remarks above were at first glance after a 10 hour day at work......
My ginger jar has 'lumps' inside....
some look like lumps/bits of clay -
and a couple of others look like they are lumps in the mould.
I hadn't noticed this before and it makes it look very unprofessional,
maybe mine is a second even?

Also...... they do have an almost unglazed ring on the base of the pot so that it would sit on the shelf without sticking and have no need for a stilt.
Yet they have used a stilt that is too big for the base [and your description of one is correct] and not cleaned all of the glaze from the base ring.... so it's shiny...... WHY?
Someone was in a hurry perhaps..... a huge order and no time to muck around doing things properly?

Yes all of those materials are used for glazes..... except for the plaster which is for making moulds and the silicone carbide which you can use for 'dusting' the kiln shelves with.

This is the base of a fraction marked piece. They're often called Crown Lynn but I think are more correctly described as a product of the Porcelain Specialties Department of Amalgamated Brick and Pipe or Ambrico:


The rim is unglazed but there is a transparent glaze over the rest of the base. I don't know whether this meant that the entire base was glazed and the rim abraded clean after firing or that the rim was left unglazed.

In comparison here is the base of an orphan - possibly Australian, Bosley Ware from SA maybe?


The marks left by the stilt are very obvious (even though I didn't know what they were two days ago).

There are no stilt marks on the minz pot.... the base would have been cleared of glaze before firing. The kiln shelf would have had kiln wash on it so that it didn't stick .... or silica sand or some other material to separate the pot from the shelf.
See how the glaze is clear.... this is the same as on my 129 and they have put another colour over the clear on the outside of the pot.... but not the bottom.... fascinating!
Btw I found very faint indistinct markings on my 129 today... possibly numbers?

The second orphan pot has the distinctive stilt marks as you can see.
Only low fired ware [up to about 1200 degrees] can use stilts.... as if the temperature is too high the stilt softens and cannot hold up the pot .... = disastrous results.

I like the cobalt blue...

A powder blue ginger jar has appeared on trademe, so I guess that now makes, two shades of blue, two shades of green and a red/maroon colour...oops and Tony says there is a yellow one, though I have yet to see one.