Ivan McMeekin

Ivan McMeekin (1919-1993) was born in Melbourne, Victoria, but moved to Sydney as a child. His interest in pottery was sparked by seeing Chinese Sung Dynasty ceramics while working in the Merchant Service on the China Coast from 1946-1949. Travelling to England in 1949, he took classes with Michael Leach at the Penzance School of Art then spent three-and-a-half years at Michael Cardew's stoneware pottery at Wenford Bridge, first as an apprentice, later as junior partner while Cardew was away in Africa. McMeekin's Australian wife Colleen Holmes was a cellist. They married while she was studying in England and had their first child there.

Returning to Australia in 1953, McMeekin was invited to set up a pottery at the Sturt Craft Centre at Mittagong, NSW, where he soon made a name for himself through his technical knowledge and experience with stoneware. In 1956, he became one of the founding members of the Potters' Society of NSW (later the Potters' Society of Australia).

In 1959, he took up a position in the Department of Industrial Arts at the University of NSW, where he taught until 1978. In 1967 he published his influential Notes for potters in Australia : raw materials and clay bodies. Around that time, the Vice Chancellor asked him if he would be interested in introducing pottery to aboriginals in the Northern Territory. He set about researching the subject and, in 1968, invited Michael Cardew to Australia for six months to set up the Bagot Pottery in Darwin. In 1970, McMeekin helped to establish the Tiwi Pottery on Bathurst Island under similar principles.

In 1978, he retired from the University due to ill health. Taking on his younger daughter Susie McMeekin (1954- ) as apprentice, he began working full-time as a potter, first at his home in Woronora River, then at a property he had bought near Gulgong, NSW. While increasingly debilitated by cancer, he continued to make pots, research raw materials and review books until his death on 28 May, 1993.

His works are marked with an impressed 'IM'. Works made at Sturt also have an impressed shovel and spade.

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