"Reclaiming the Crown" North & South Magazine 2009

 

"Reclaiming the Crown" North & South Magazine 2009


By Adrienne Rewi.


Christchurch artists, Rudolf Boelee and his wife, Robyne Voyce are breathing new life into the iconic New Zealand pottery brand, Crown Lynn.

The pair has developed a new range of Crown Lynn tea-towels, cushions and cards depicting three of the company’s most famous images – the swan, the New Zealand Railways cup and the Ernie Shufflebottom-designed hand-potted vase. For Boelee, it is the perfect extension of his use of the images in his own paintings and a continuation of his passion for “the first New Zealand factory company to step beyond the humdrum” and make what has become a highly collectible product.

Boelee owns the former Crown Lynn New Zealand trademark as a limited liability and likens its discovery to “finding the very best vase in a junk shop for next-to-nothing.”
“Back in the early 1990s I was working in the New Zealand Companies Office as a compliance clerk. My job was to strike companies off the register when they had ceased trading. Company closures were notified in the New Zealand Gazette and that’s where I saw the Crown Lynn Potteries Ltd name listed. Robyne and I had been collection Post-War ceramics since the early eighties so it was all part of a continuum. I applied for their trademark - Crown Lynn New Zealand – incorporated the nameas a limited liability company in 1993. A few years later I also incorporated a ‘new’ Crown Lynn Potteries Limited that I have since sold, but we still own Crown Lynn New Zealand Limited he says.


He has since exhibited a number of painting series featuring Crown Lynn imagery and the latest – a suite of lithographs - will show at Papergraphica in Christchurch in November.

“Crown Lynn had a very egalitarian approach and that’s what I liked most when I arrived in New Zealand from Holland in 1963. Many of the products veered towards the kitsch but they also have a simple formality that has endured and many New Zealanders now recognise that. It was made in New Zealand and not much of that quality was back then. The tea-towels and cushions continue that philosophy – they’re a way for people to own an affordable piece of the Crown Lynn brand.”

Screen printed on cotton in cobalt blue and white, the tea-towels feature the Crown Lynn logo and are available in galleries and design stores from Auckland to Invercargill. (www.pugdesignstore.co.nz for more details).