Linn Ware: Celebrating the Ceramics of Olifantsfontein
Timed Online Auction, 2 - 13 May 2025
Session One
About the SessionThis sale features a broad selection of Linn Ware that celebrates South Africa’s rich ceramic traditions highlighting a key moment in the country’s artistic development — during a period when industrialisation and mass production were rapidly transforming the design landscape. The Ceramic Studio, renamed Linn Ware in 1943, was founded on Sir Thomas Cullinan’s farm Olifantsfontein, outside Johannesburg which had rich deposits of clay and lime. It was staffed mostly by women students from the Durban School of Art, several of whom studied further at the Royal College of Art, London. The Studio closed in the late 1950’s but left behind a beautiful body of work that is highly collectable today.
About this Item
impressed dish stamp
Notes
This particular piece, with its beautiful balance of form, has the characteristic blue colour palette, achieved using cobalt oxide in a transparent glaze. This, together with the signature innovation of double-glazing, resulted in the rich colour and the luminosity for which these pieces became renowned. The Studio used two different impressed marks, one mark superficially resembles an African hut but actually represents a profile view of a dish with a lid.
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