You are here: home > gulgong gold > janet mansfield

Gulgong Gold

Janet Mansfield

Amongst the well known potters who gave their time and skills to help with Gulgong’s Arts and Crafts exhibitions in the 1970’s was Mrs. Janet Mansfield, who stands tall among the potters in our area.

She told me, “My husband wanted to have a place in the country and I was enthusiastic about this district because of the clays. The clay deposits are excellent quality here, and I felt it was important to be near them and to have room to build my kilns”. Ivan McMeekin had installed a processing plant for clays, and students were invited to accompany Ivan and Janet on trips around the clay fields.

Janet had become interested in making pots in the 1960’s when she was a young mother, living in Sydney with a busy husband and a young family. She felt that she wanted to do something practical with her hands. “Perhaps it was the pioneering spirit”, she told me with a smile. She decided to enroll in evening pottery classes to pursue this end. Her teachers, noting her enthusiasm (and no doubt her talent), encouraged her to enroll at the Ceramics Department of the National Art School at Easy Sydney. It was certainly a busy time for her, especially as she produced a fourth child during the course!

It was an exciting time, too, in the 1960’s. Craft groups were starting and ceramic groups in which Janet was involved, were formed. “I found it fun to organize things”, she said. “We invited people from all over the world to come and lecture. It was very like what I am doing now, every three or four years in Gulgong – inviting overseas visitors to gather here for a week and asking other people to come and listen and take advantage of the opportunity to meet them.

When Janet first visited Gulgong it was at the invitation of the Arts & Crafts group, who had asked her to open the Four Towns exhibition. She remembers that she was so nervous that her husband drove her to Flirtation Hill to look at the view to calm down.

It is difficult to imagine this lady being daunted in any way. She modestly showed me the eight kilns she has built with her own hands – “If you can lift a brick you can build a kiln”, she says.

Every three years Janet organizes an “event”; a conference on ceramics. The first conference took place at “Morning View”, the property near Mebul where the Mansfields moved to in 1977. For over a week, 450 people attended, camping out in the paddock surrounding Janet’s kilns and studio. Cool rooms and caravans were hired and 22 master potters from all over the world arrived to conduct specialist workshops on many aspects of the ceramics process. The last three ceramics conferences have been held at venues in Gulgong township. “It takes”, said Janet, “about two years to prepare for each event and a year to get over it!”

Janet Mansfield spends quite a bit of time traveling all over the world to give talks and conduct workshops. In 2001, she went to South Africa, USA, Korea, China and the UK. In 2002 she judged an international competition in France, and also visited Germany, the USA and Italy.

One would think that she would have no time to spare but Janet proves that there must be more than 24 hours in each day. She edits two international magazines – “Ceramics Technical” and “Ceramics Art & Perception” which are distributed to 60 different countries. The magazines’ popularity has grown hugely over the years”, Janet told me, with some understatement. “It is quite a big thing doing the layouts and editing”. Currently there are over 12,000 subscribers to “Ceramic Art & Perception” throughout the world.

Meanwhile, Janet Mansfield continues to produce her own beautiful pottery. She has great admiration for the late Ivan McMeekin who, she says, was the pioneer, the historically established person who brought everybody’s attention to the wonderful clays and rock materials available in the Gulgong area.

We are indeed fortunate that our particular corner of the world has the riches to attract such talented craftspeople.

Return to the Gulgong Gold Section