(Photo: Ration Shed Museum)
April 15, 2016
The Ration Shed Museum is on the hunt for pottery produced in Cherbourg between 1969 and 1986.
The Museum is putting together a touring exhibition of Barambah Pottery that will be opening at the Childers Art Space on May 31.
After this, the exhibition will run at the Kingaroy Regional Art Gallery during July, then move on to the Queensland State Library’s Kuril Dhagun Indigenous Art Space in December.
Barambah Pottery was a commercial training venture that ran in Cherbourg from 1969 to 1986.
During its 17 years of operation many people were employed at the pottery factory creating vases, jugs and goblets, cups and plates … even ashtrays and money-boxes.
Most of the pieces produced at Barambah Pottery were decorated with traditional Aboriginal designs and motifs, including a variety of animals.
The bulk of the factory’s output was sold to foreign tourists through the Aboriginal Creations store in Brisbane, but some of it was made specifically for South Burnett service clubs such as Apex, Lions, and Rotary.
The Ration Shed’s exhibition project has been actively searching for pieces, and has already brought some of the pottery home from the UK and USA.
But exhibition co-curators Robert ‘Rocko’ Langton and Matthew Wengert are keen to find more items, and want to hear from anyone in the South Burnett who has Barambah Pottery pieces they might loan, donate or sell to the Ration Shed Museum for the exhibition.
The pottery can be easily identified because it was almost always stamped with the word ‘Barambah’ on the base.
Rocko and Matthew have assembled a diverse collection that will form the core of the display, along with rare archival photographs of the pottery factory’s operations.
Rocko was once employed at Barambah Pottery, painting images on pots before they went into the kiln.
He is still dedicated to his art and has fond memories of his early artistic training at the factory.
The Ration Shed Museum exists to examine and explain the history of Cherbourg’s Indigenous community, and it won the State Library of Queensland’s Community History Award last year.
You can contact the Museum by phoning (07) 4169-5753 or by emailing them.
