Cup

Born in Melbourne in 1926 and following his discharge from the Australian navy in 1947, Milton Moon went on to work in radio. In 1948 he married Bette Pestell and they soon moved to Brisbane. There Bette opened the store ‘Odds and Ends’ in the Brisbane Arcade, where she sold Australian-made art pottery and giftware. Bette’s business skills, honed at this time, would prove essential to the success of her husband’s artistic career.

In the mid-1950s Moon became interested in ceramics, learning the technique of wheel-throwing earthenware pottery with Mervyn Feeney, a commercial potter in Brisbane. He subsequently worked closely with fellow potter Harry Memmott, and from the late 1960s began to explore the use of gas-fired kilns, which enabled the higher firing temperatures required for the production of stronger stoneware.

In 1961 Moon embarked upon a parallel career, that of teaching, eventually becoming Senior Instructor in Pottery at the Central Technical College in Brisbane. In 1965 he was awarded a Foundation Churchill Fellowship and in the following year travelled the world to connect with leading figures of the international craft and art community. On his return he was appointed as a tutor in art in the Architecture Department of the University of Queensland, working in this role in 1967. In 1966 he represented Australia at the second World Craft Congress, Montreux, Switzerland. Moon moved to Adelaide in 1969 following his appointment as Head of Ceramics at the South Australian School of Art.

After receiving a Myer Foundation Geijutsu Fellowship in 1974, he spent a year living and working in Japan, a period that would have a defining influence on his work and life. Upon his return to Adelaide, Moon gave up teaching and set up Summertown Studios, a studio, gallery and home in an old barn in the Adelaide Hills. In 1984 Moon was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM) and in 1993 was the recipient of a prestigious Australian Artists Creative Fellowship, for a five-year period, from 1994 to 1998.

The early 1960s saw Moon’s practice undergo a significant transformation and a consolidation of materials and ideas. As he began the serious transition from earthenware to stoneware, the scale of his work increased. Paralleling his technical developments was Moon’s intense interest in the conceptual challenges of the material, with his work at this time displaying an eclectic range of influences. Sculptural in form, with strong references to the patterns, textures and colours of the Queensland coastal fringe, his parallel teaching career also greatly informed the development of his practice.