Murray Masterpiece Discovered

Collector | CFile Discovers Missing Masterpiece by British Potter William Staite Murray in Sydney

“SYDNEY, Australia — Our headline is not entirely accurate but it was too good to pass up, although we are the first to introduce an unseen, lost work to the world. To be more accurate, the piece found us via Rhodesia, Africa (now Zimbabwe), Gulgong and then Sydney. I was standing at the opening reception for an exhibition of New Zealand pottery during the Gulgong Clay 2016 conference when a young ceramist, Clare Unger (née Valentine), shyly approached me. What she told me made my blood race.

“First a little backstory: William Staite Murray was the greatest ceramist in Britain between the two wars and he was an artist to boot. If you know the name of Bernard Leach but not Murray you have totally flunked British studio pottery history.

“Murray was Leach’s nemesis in every sense. He began making pots in England before Leach’s return from Japan and, strictly speaking, he should be seen as the prime initiator of the studio pottery movement. He earned glowing reviews from the art critics of The Times and he was an exhibiting member of the prestigious Seven and Five Society that included Barbara Hepworth, Henry Moore, Christopher Wood and Ben Nicholson. Earlier he worked with Vorticist artist Cuthbert Hamilton and made pottery in that jazzy style.”

Read the full article and see the discoveries on the CFile.Daily website here.