Freeform platter

Milton Moon is widely recognised as one of the most important Australian potters of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. Born in Melbourne in 1926, Moon became interested in ceramics in 1950 and learnt wheel-throwing earthenware with Mervyn Feeney, a commercial potter in Brisbane. He subsequently worked closely with fellow potter Harry Memmott, exploring the use of gas-fired kilns, which enabled the higher firing temperatures required for the production of stronger stoneware. Moon moved to Adelaide in 1969, where he became Head of Ceramics at the South Australian School of Art.

In 1974 he spent a formative year in Japan after receiving a Myer Foundation Geijutsu Fellowship and it was there that he became deeply interested in traditional Japanese ceramics. He worked primarily in stoneware, striving for over forty years to express the colours, shades and textures of Australian landscapes in his ceramics. His Free form platter, 1996, is representative of his later work and harmoniously combines loose form with a textured scrawling pattern

Rebecca Evans, Curator of Decorative Arts & Design