Darbyshire pottery company

Darbyshire Ware Pottery was started by Jean and Bill Darbyshire in 1948. In Dec 1952 Darbyshire Pottery Pty. Ltd. built a new factory on three acres of land at 17 Government Rd (soon after renamed Odin Road), Osborne Park.

They had three large kilns to handle the increased production. All up it took two weeks for the process; from the making of the clay slip, pouring into moulds, fettling the moulded pieces, drying, first firing (9 hrs), spray painting, hand painting, dipping in the secret glaze and the last firing (16 hours) to produce the finished piece.

At the factory they produced over 150 different items which combined aesthetic interests with the reality of the marketplace. As well as ‘functional items’, like the well-known salt and pepper shakers (60 styles of animals, fruit and flowers- taxed at a lower rate) Darbyshire Pottery also produced ‘novelty items’, such as the Urchin Series (designed by Paul Rigby in 1956) and ‘Dr Livingstone and the Cannibal’, and ‘decorative items’ (which were taxed at a higher rate). The pottery was sold throughout Australia and exported to New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.

Darbyshire Pottery hired many ex-service personnel and professionally trained Eastern European migrants that had recently landed in Perth, after fleeing war torn countries. One of these was 43-year-old Ukrainian Alexander (Shura) Beresowsky, who had graduated from an art academy in Kiev, Ukraine, when he was 29. In 1951, while working at DP, he exhibited with Howard Taylor at Newspaper House.