Ian Calder McKay was Here
A Legacy of Beauty in Pottery
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1321816600004979Keywords:
Ian Calder McKay, potteryAbstract
In 1983, more or less mid-career as it turned out to be in the light of his early death, Ian McKay summarised his intentions as a potter:
I try to make simple pots that people will enjoy using. The traditions I draw on for inspiration are mainly Japanese and what could loosely be called ‘the Cardew’ tradition. In practice for me this amounts to forms that are a clear statement of the pot's function, and very simple glaze recipes using the maximum of hand collected local materials – so that the pots may speak for themselves and give pleasure unspoiled by too much intrusion of the potter's own personality.
References
McKay, I., ‘Peter Rushforth – A Portfolio: Ian McKay Speaks’, Pottery in Australia 29.4 (1991): 4.
The First North Queensland Ceramics Awards, October 13–29, 1983 [Catalogue] (Townsville: Perc Tucker Regional Gallery, 1983), 27.
Anderson, B. Hoare, J., Clay Statements (Toowoomba: Darling Downs Institute Press, 1985), 54.
Currie, I., ‘Ian Currie Writes’, Pottery in Australia 29.3 (1990): 38.
McGregor, C., In the Making (Melbourne: Thomas Nelson), 1969), 182.
Grealy, K., ‘Queensland Ceramics Then and Now’, Pottery in Australia 25.1 (1986): 4.
Mansfield, J., Contemporary Ceramic Art of Australia and New Zealand (Sydney: Craftsman House, 1994), 12.
Cochrane, G., The Crafts Movement in Australia (Sydney: UNSW Press, 1992), 209.
Dormer, P. Cripps, D., Alison Britton in Studio (London: Bellew, 1985), 9, 10.
Cardew, M., Pioneer Potter: An Autobiography (London: Collins, 1988), 31.
Conversation with Mary McKay, Sydney, January 2007.
The Art of the Potter: A Tribute to Ian McKay, August 30–19 September 1991 [Catalogue], (Sydney: David Jones Art Gallery, 1991).
Leach, B., A Potter's Book, 2nd ed. (London: Faber and Faber, 1945), 7.
Currie, ‘Ian Currie Writes’.
Harrison, S., ‘Ian McKay: Potter, Writer, Musician, Poet, Intellectual’, Pottery in Australia 29.3 (n.d.): 34.
Dormer and Cripps, Alison Britton in Studio, 10.
Currie, ‘Ian Currie Writes’.
The Art of the Potter.
The First North Queensland Ceramics Awards, 27.
Harrison, ‘Ian McKay’.
For more detail on the McKay family background, especially the life and career of Rev. Fred McKay and his brothers, see McKenzie, M., Outback Achiever: Fred McKay, Successor to Flynn of the Inland (Brisbane: Boolarong Press, 1997).
Conversation with Judith McKay, August 2008.
Anderson and Hoare, Clay Statements.
Buckridge, P., ‘Plot an Escape from Torpor of English Syllabus’, Australian HES, 18 June 2008: 27.
Courier-Mail, 2 July 1963: 15.
Personal communication with Jeraldene Just, February 2007.
McKenzie, Outback Achiever, 4.
McKenzie, Outback Achiever, 21.
Hardy, S., The Unusual Life of Edna Walling (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2005), 243.
Conversation with Jess and Frank McKay, June 2008.
Smart, C., Jubilate Agno (London: W.H. Bond, 1954), 404.
Pictured in Moult, A, Craft in Australia (Sydney: Reed, 1984), 21.
Personal communications with Ian Currie and Glenn Cooke, 2007–08.
Letter, ICM to Ian Currie 25 June 1981: 2.
His book-buying experiences provoked him to write to the Sydney Morning Herald (7 October, 1969: 2), comparing the local with the mail-order price and availability of books. It drew a vituperative riposte by Max Harris in his ‘Browsing’ column in The Australian ('Doom Faces Australia's Bookshops’, 18 October 1969: 20), attacking ‘Professor Pinchpenny’, the ‘wiseacre bookbuyer from the greasier groves of Academia’, who, ‘like unpredictable and sporadic bursts of hepatitis … infects the metropolitan dailies.’ He was therefore surprised at a subsequent approach by Harris to write a short piece, ‘Bookbuyer's Lament’, for the Australian Book Review (December 1969–January 1970: 44–45), to which Harris responded with ‘Bookseller's reply’. Harris began, with a change of tone, ‘Mr McKay's civilised and completely reasonable queries on the retail price of books …’
Anderson and Hoare,, Clay Statements.
Victor Mace Fine Art Gallery, ‘Homage to Ian McKay’ [exhibition invitation] 1991.
Harrison, ‘Ian McKay’.
Moult, Craft in Australia, 20.
ICM letter to A. Ransome (AR), 7 January 1970.
ICM letter to AR 16 December 1969.
Anderson and Hoare, Clay Statements.
Queensland Art Gallery, Art Prize Exhibitions in Brisbane, 1950–1975.
Under the auspices of the Contemporary Art Society, see G. Cooke, A Time Remembered: Art in Brisbane 1950–1975 (Brisbane: Queensland Art Gallery, 1995), 79–80.
McKay, I., in Gallery 1 Eleven [brochure] ‘1972 exhibitions’, n.p.
Just, J., An Evening at Rockton, January 1971 (unpublished ms).
Personal communication from Jane Greenwood, December 2008.
McKay, I., in Moult, Craft in Australia, 20.
Gwyn Hanssen Pigott (born 1935) is another potter who began with an Arts degree majoring in Literature. She, though, also majored in Fine Arts, at the University of Melbourne, enabling her to study pottery as an undergraduate: Gwyn Hanssen Pigott: A Survey, 1955–2005 (Melbourne: J Smith/NGV, 2005), 98.
Cardew, Pioneer Potter, 21.
Harrison, ‘Ian McKay’.
Harrison, ‘Ian McKay’, quoting M. McKay.
Ian later wrote a significant appreciation of Levy's approach and work: I. McKay, ‘A Potter's Art’, Craft Arts February/April (1987): 30–35.
Letter ICM to Ian Currie, 27 October 1981.
Cardew, Pioneer Potter, 237.
ICM letter to K. and A. Ransome, 16 November 1975. Christopher Smart's cat, the asylum companion whom he celebrates in Jubilate Agno, was called Jeoffry [sic].
Interview with Janine King and Steve Harrison, Mittagong, January 2007.
‘Ceramics practitioners were arguably the first artists or craftspeople to live primarily in regional areas, partly due to the predominance of the woodfiring process in the 70s and 80s. Generally trained in the cities, those opting for rural life on the North Coast included Ian McKay, Tony Nankervis, Malina and Dennis Monks, John Stewart, Bob Connery, Andrew Stewart, Geoff Crispin, Sandra Taylor and Patsy Hely.’ K. Selwood, ‘ConVerge: A Regional Perspective’, ConVerge: Northern Rivers Touring Ceramic Exhibition, 2006–2008, 7–8.
In possession of K. Selwood.
McKay, I., ‘Artisan or Tradesman’, Border Post, 21 July 1977: 7.
ICM letter to K. Ransome, 12 September 1978. From 1974 to 2001, the Queensland College of Art was located in the Brisbane suburb of Seven Hills.
ICM letter to Ian Currie, 27 October 1981.
The Art of the Potter.
Sturt and its history are extensively documented – for example, see Cochrane, The Crafts Movement in Australia, 72–75, 289–90; Ceramics: Art and Perception 13 (1993): 94; and D. Aitken, ‘Sturt Craft Centre: A Rich History and a Renewal’, Ceramics: Art and Perception 25 (1996): 75–79.
Ian McKay wrote in the 1987 Crafts Board grant application, in possession of Ian Currie: ‘In May 1986 I visited Taiwan's most accomplished potter in the field of iron and copper glazes, a Mr Tsai, and found him enthralled by the quality of the dark clay bodies and glazes from Mittagong, to the point where he has initiated exchange of information and is interested in long-term cooperation of research in this field. Likewise Mr Soukichi Nagae of Tajimi, Japan, who has spent a lifetime of making and researching dark iron bodies and glazes and whose own work is related to the greatest of Song Period oil-spot and yöhen Temmoku, and has been the subject of NHK Television documentaries. Mr Nagae keeps me informed about recent findings in Japan in the hope that my work with Mittagong area materials may develop as quickly as possible, so interesting are the aesthetic possibilities of these materials when approached in the way I have established. In 1985 I sent fragments of Temmoku-type bodies and glazes I had made to the Shanghai Institute of Ceramics. This led immediately to invitations from the Chinese Ministry of Light Industry and the Academia Sinica to visit China to discuss the technical and aesthetic problems of creating these and other Song-related wares with all of the major researchers working in this field in China. I have subsequently been offered financial assistance from the Dept. of Foreign Affairs through the Aust.–China Council for this purpose.’
McKay, I., in Anderson and Hoare, Clay Statements.
Allen, C., ‘Harmonious Conjunction of Art and Nature, Sydney Morning Herald, 4 August 1989: 12.
Currie, ‘Ian Currie Writes’.
Conversation with Mary Taguchi, January 2007.
Ian Calder McKay, Funeral Service at Mittagong Cemetery Conducted by Rev, Allan McKay, Tuesday 3rd April 1990 [order of service brochure].
Examples are ‘The second wave’, Fo Yuan Art Gallery, Melbourne, 2003, and ‘Collector's choice by Victor Mace’, Toowoomba Regional Art Gallery, 2004–05.
McKay, I. in Moult, Craft in Australia.
