
Gwyn Hanssen Pigott was one of Australia’s most illustrious studio ceramicists whose fine skill and cerebral approach to her art will be greatly missed. After a 1960s to 70s repertoire of stone ware, from the 1980s Gwyn became famous for her fine and translucent porcelain forms – bottles, bowls and teapots – deceptively simple but actually requiring great technical skill and firing control.

Since the 1990s and up until her death Gwyn had focussed on arranging numbers of these vessels as carefully considered ‘still life’ groups. Gywn’s extensive and illustrious output of ceramics born of sixty decades experience are well represented in the Powerhouse Museum’s collection. In 1954 Gwyn Hanssen Pigott (at that time Gwyn John) was studying for a fine arts degree at the University of Melbourne. She was intrigued by the Chinese and Korean pottery in the National Gallery of Victoria and had read Bernard Leach’s ‘A Potters Book’. Her thesis required her to collect information from significant practising potters in Victoria and New South Wales, including Ivan McMeekin at the influential Sturt workshops, in Mittagong, New South Wales. She was eventually apprenticed to McMeekin for three years and considers him her most important influence.