116 blue jug

haselnuss,
I'm just wondering if your 116 jug could be a Teal shape rather than Orzel: it sits uncomfortably amongst the Orzel Manhattan in the gallery.

It was the incised bands that made me think Teal and a Teal 116 has not been posted yet. I will have to look through my photos to see if I have one with that number from Keith Sandford's collection.

It appears that Keith doesn't have such a milk jug or an item with 116 but I am pretty convinced that both the styling and numbering of the blue jug are consistent with Teal Ceramics. Note the recurring theme of two incised lines beneath scalloped top.

The glaze and finish don't match anything I am familiar with so I'm wondering if it may have been produced by a third party.

I'm not all that familiar with Teal but I do have some. To me, that wavy line especially and also the blue glaze don't look like Orzel or Teal. Hmmmm who else numbered their products.

Val, I'm pretty sure this is a Teal shape.

As out of place as it is in the Orzel gallery, the shape would fit in nicely with the following numbers in the Teal gallery.

Keith did use some Teal moulds at Richmond when he was manager there.

What happened to the moulds in the 25 or so years since then I do not know.

The glaze suggests 1990s or later. I suppose it could have been a homer, but again the glaze suggests the timing is wrong for that.

The body might also offer some clues. All Teal's production pottery was stoneware.

The coffee pot in my montage was one of Keith's design, and he described adding the incised bands when talking to me about modelling and mould making. Keith's collecting interest in Teal is only in pieces of his own design, so as the jug shape matches others in his collection I would say not only is it Teal but Teal modelled by Keith Sandford.

Ok.. you sound pretty certain Jeremy.

I'm not sure about the jug at all and there is another pottery down south that used numbers. I will check it out later. It scares me how things get verified without any verification....

Yes, It is not easy to verify pottery items without the manufacturers name on it even when you have the number but on this forum the members use their knowledge to discuss the pottery piece and most times get it right in the end.

I really enjoy the discussions on these tricky topics and have learned a lot to help me identify pottery properly in the future.

I was sure about the jug and really excited because of the yellow pattern so I got my husband to take a picture as soon as we got home after purchasing it to put it on the forum straight away.

May be I should have slept over it and I should have had a better look at the gallery because it is obvious now that the jug doesn't fit in between the Manhatten range like Jeremy rightly pointed out. The other info Jeremy gave makes perfect sense too.

I also noticed today that the numbers on the Orzel pieces seem to be on the other side of the pottery item, the bottom and with Teal they seem to be at the top.
I have a little white teal vase with the lines and the numbers 415 at the top and when you turn it round it has the Teal at the top too.

If I had posted the jug under the topic "Is this NZ Pottery" it wouldn't have ended up in the Orzel gallery but I got it wrong this time.

I'll be even more careful in future to get it right but don't want to feel put off posting pictures because I think it is important to collect as much info and pictures about NZ pottery on this forum as possible and I must admit I enjoy the collecting too.

It is great to see that mistakes get picked up straight away on this forum because it shows how much knowledge the members have.

We are all human and make mistakes. As long as we learn from them it should be all good.

Oh wow haselnuss I admire your generosity
I on the other hand would like more confirmation on this jug, so I am going to move it into the 'Is This New Zealand Pottery' topic, so that it can be thrashed out there
Keep up the posting of New Zealand Pottery as you have contributed an enormous amount to the site for others to learn from. Cheers Ev.

The jug shape is in this picture. (And the next one.)

https://www.newzealandpottery.net/t938-teal-ceramics-balclutha#14151

I'm pretty sure Teal would never have glazed it like that (the blue and yellow).
I'm pretty ignorant of Richmond though.

That's great Jeremy.  So the shape is Teal, but the glaze is unfamiliar.  Richmond were very subtle when it came to glazes.  I couldn't see those catalogues, but can today. The blue glaze could have been a trial run or for a specific order ....?

I brought Richmond into the mix because Keith told me he managed it (at some time) and we have seen elsewhere that Teal shapes were added to their range, but Michael Smythe tells us (New Zealand by Design, p249) that Teal bought Richmond in 1983 and it closed a year later to be replaced by Craft Habitat. (A hand-potters cooperative?) TO ME the glaze seems too early for 1984. Ev, you would have a much better idea of when similar glazes started to appear. Gail Henry (2nd edition, p240) puts Teal's closure as 1987 (although the companies register paper trail does not die out until the 1990s) so if the blue/yellow glaze was experimental I think it more likely to have been an experiment at Balclutha than at Nelson. Bearing in mind that Teal's output was all stoneware I think a ring test is in order to determine what the body of the blue/yellow jug is. If it turns out to be earthenware then I would say that the mould had been used by a third party.

Picking up on a few other points raised in this discussion ...

... haselnuss has referred to the difficulty of identification without the maker's name appearing, but the repeated use of Clay Craft moulds by others with the Clay Craft name sometimes still intact demonstrates that even the presence of a maker's name is no guarantee of the manufacturer ...

... and ...

... Orzel did produce a small jug VERY similar in shape to this one but without the lines/rings/bands, but I have only seen it in the terracotta clay of the settlers collection. The example I have pointed out in cherish_moi's current Orzel auctions looks coloured but the green inner suggests to me it is likely terracotta settlers too: I think I can even see a bit of terracotta showing through the dried slip on the outside. See:
http://www.trademe.co.nz/Pottery-glass/auction-815266405.htm and
https://www.newzealandpottery.net/t5844-some-interesting-orzel-on-tm#22552


I have individual photos from Keith's Teal collection (as previously posted in a group shot) that I have emailed to the computer for posting, prompted by this discussion. I hope to get to that later today.

Jeremy, regarding your question about when blue glazes were first used .....
Temuka, Timaru and many other potteries were using a deep blue in the 1930's and 1940's. Blue is an old favourite with potters and potteries as all you need to achieve the colour is cobalt oxide in a clear glaze.

I guess the question should be:

"when did it become fashionable to use brightly-coloured glazes again?"

Not sure as plain glazes have been popular forever.
Bright painted ware became popular in the mid to late 1980's.
This jug has a plain blue glaze with a contrasting yellow glaze slip trailed around it.

Many thanks to Melita Johnston for her photos of this Teal Ceramics Shape 116 Jug.
She has pointed out that the spout is different to the blue one in the Gallery.
I can see that the handle is different and the body shape as well.
I would like to remove the blue jug as I feel it is an imposter, but I will wait to get some feedback first.

I will add this one to the Teal Gallery to help identify the shape.
The Blue one is still a bother, but I will leave it there for now

Re the blue jug:

Melita's Teal 116 jug is definitely a different shape from the blue one. I too have a Teal jug that shape with 116 on the base.
There is no 116 shape that I can see in the Orzel gallery. So there is a FAINT possibility this blue jug is Orzel. However, the the blue jug does look as though it could be the same shape as the jug on the lower right hand side of the Teal promotional photo that Jeremy posted in this thread.

However the blue and yellow glaze is not one which I have ever seen in Teal or Orzel, so I am happy for the blue jug to removed. I believe it has been decorated by an enthusiastic amateur. Possibly it has come from a Hobby Ceramics class.

Does anyone else have any thoughts?

Thanks Val as Melita's jug is a definite and the blue one is the odd man out.
I'm going to remove it until someone can give it a definite provenance.

Melita has posted Teal Ceramics 116 Jugs in two different shapes on Facebook and I found that I had one the same shape as the blue little jug.
So now we have to have both in the Teal Ceramics Gallery as they are both definitely Teal Ceramics