Harry Hargreaves Designer of Wharetana ware

I would be very interested to hear who was the orginal designer of Wharatane ware. There seems to be many view points on who it was.
Neil

I must check that out, as I have a great regard for the talented modeller/s of Wharetana Ware.  Harry Hargreaves is one name that comes to mind, but I know there were other names as well.  David Jenkin too perhaps?

Hi Neil, can you enlighten us to the other points of views, as I wasn't aware of any.
Cheers Ev .... and welcome to the Forum

Hello again,
My wife is the youngest daughter of Harry Hargreaves.
Harry came to NZ in 1924.
It is not known exacatly when he started at Crown Lynn.
He taught himself to speak flunent Maori and his books and writing confirm that he was interested in all thing Maori.
As for the Wharetana designs we have the following.
(For a full transcription email us at *************)
Report on Mr Harriss's Maori Carving exhibits 14/09/1949
1 The specimens examined were splendidly conceived and of beauitful proportion and balanced for converting into Pottery pieces.

The last paragraph is interesting.
The writers personal opinion is that it is quite un-understandable that one with the gift of woodcarving as crinced? by Mr Harriss should fail miserably on the most crucial matters of design.

We have sketches of various designs of which one seems to be an early version of the book ends
Neil
( Sorry for the delay getting back)

Thank you so much Neil !
I'm delighted to hear that Harry Hargreaves was interested in all things Maori.
Do I gather from the excerpt that you quoted that he carved in wood too?
The Auckland Museum has some lovely pieces of Wharetana Ware in their collection gifted by Mrs Jessie Hargreaves in 2002.
Included is a stunning bisqued carved bottle the same as that made by Parker Pottery for Lincoln Wines in the 1970's.  A mystery that needs to be solved!

As members are able to contact one another by Private Message [pm] or email I will delete your email address so that the spam bots won't find it.  I will make contact shortly regarding your offer of the transcript as I would be very interested to learn more about Harry Hargreaves the amazing artist of Wharetana Ware.

I've just been sent an image of the Parker bottle at Ak Museum......so Harry Hargreaves was the designer??

Tim,

The question here is: does anyone have, or have an image of, the Lincoln bottle in Wharetana glaze, and a Wharetana number for it?

We know that resin moulds were belatedly made for Wharetana pieces and would suppose that some second generation Wharetana pieces could have been made but how to identify.

(I have suspected that my own Wharetana mug is a repro made from the resin moulds as the glaze does not seem right.)

The fact that the Auckland Museum Lincoln bottle is a bisque is sadly very unhelpful.

It could be second generation Wharetana or something collected coincidentally.

Without a genuine glazed and numbered Wharetana example it would only be guesswork to say that the Parker/Lincoln shape is Harry Hargreaves' work.
.
A wee bit later ...
Portage has many Wharetana bisques and individual pieces have the story of the moulds being made, dated as the 1980s. If Crown Lynn retained the bisques (guess here as I am supposing they come from the Richard Quinn collection), why does Auckland Museum have one?
See: http://www.nzmuseums.co.nz/esearch/object?a=3384&q=Wharetana

Also, if Neil, above, has an original drawing of one of the bottles by HH that would be really helpful too!

You'd need to check with Ak Museum to see if the bisque came from the Mrs Jessie Hargreaves collection or elsewhere.

The bisque Parker Pottery Lincoln Wines bottle was donated to the Museum by a Mrs ? Hargreaves. We recorded this info on the site a long time ago. Mr Parker did not remember the name Hargreaves when I spoke to him and I think the time frame for this isn't quite right.
The bottle reminds me of Wharetana Ware more so than anything else 'out there'.
Bruce Yallop told me that they used many of the old Wharetana moulds that were at Crown Lynn in the 1980's.
Owen Salisbury's son suggested Peter Cooke as the modeller for this bottle, but it doesn't look like the same style to me.

Norm Parker's words regarding the model maker:

I do believe the intermediate and the model maker had worked together at Crown Lynn but were both well into retirement before I had made contact with either of them.

Edits to add that I don't know of any Wharetana moulds at the Portage Museum that are made from resin Jeremy. Can you add links please?

Sorry Ev,
Looked like resin but could be silicon rubber.
Portage has the bisques.

I think I saw the moulds somewhere in relation to the Pakuranga exhibition.
No idea where they are now.