"Bohemia Ware" vase

Modernist ceramics

No modernist interior was complete without ceramics. In Wellington, Stockton’s catered to the design conscious with fine coffee sets and bowls imported from the London studio of ceramicist Lucie Rie.

Stockton’s also sold work by New Zealand potters Peter Stichbury and Len Castle. Both admired the simple shapes and abstract designs of British and Scandinavian modernist ware, as well as more traditional forms.

Factories produced modernist ceramics too. At Crown Lynn, in Auckland, the newly arrived Czech Mirek Smíšek created his Bohemia Ware line. He incised the hand-thrown vessels with designs inspired in part by Aboriginal art.