ceramics - Hughan, Harold

Harold Randalph Hughan was born in Mildura, Victoria, in 1893 and educated at Hamilton in the Western District of Victoria.

At the outbreak of World War I in 1914 he joined the Australian Infantry Forces as an apprentice engineer and spent from 1916 to 1918 with Australian troops in France. At the end of the war he pursued further training as an engineer in England and returned to Australia in 1920.

Previously interested in the crafts of weaving and woodworking, in the early 1940s Hughan became involved in his wife’s and son's attempts at pottery, his knowledge as an engineer enabling him to build and refine the kilns they used.

Hughan's early efforts were influenced by the advice of F. E. Cox (‘Jolliffe') another amateur Melbourne potter. Becoming fascinated by the collection of Chinese ceramics in the National Gallery of Victoria and guided by, among others, Bernard Leach‘s A Potters Book published in 1940, he soon began to use the wheel, making experiments in stoneware that were far in advance of any other Australian pottery of the time.

Hughan held his first exhibition in 1950 at the gallery in Georges, the Melbourne department store. That exhibition marked him as a most important Australian potter, a reputation that his second exhibition in 1968 confirmed and magnified.

In 1970 the National Gallery of Victoria honoured Hughan with a retrospective exhibition. His commitment to useful objects, possessing an honest dignity and refinement makes Hughan outstanding amongst Australian potters.

Harold Hughan died in 1987.