Plate

This cabinet plate was produced in England between 1939 and 1975. It is decorated with a transfer of four Māori women dressed in kākahu, sitting beside a body of water. The transfer is based on a black and white photograph from the 1930s, and the plate has been hand-coloured for decorative effect.

Royal Doulton in New Zealand

It was suggested in the 1990s that two out of every three New Zealand homes contained at least one Doulton product. Doulton ceramics have been enormously popular in Aotearoa since the 1906 New Zealand International Exhibition in Christchurch, where John Bates & Co. exhibited a wide range of art ceramics. Consumer tastes were largely driven by British trends, but Doulton also created a distinctly local ‘Maori ware’ series incorporating hei tiki and other Māori motifs.

This Doulton design, which was produced until 1975, was the last to reference Māori. As Andrew Paul Woods wrote in his article on ‘Maori ware’, ‘the cavalier depiction of indigenous peoples on commercial objects, with the attendant political and ethical concerns’ was increasingly seen as unacceptable.

Further Reading

Quérée, Jennifer. 1993. Royal Doulton. Christchurch: Canterbury Museum.

Wood, Andrew Paul. 2023. ‘Royal Doulton “Māori / Kia Ora Ware”, “Māori Art Ware” and the New Zealand Context’. Journal of the Northern Ceramics Society, 39: 93-123.