Happy potter, an Honorary Doctor
by Geraldine Hinter
When renowned ceramicist and former Head of Ceramics at UniSA’s SA School of Art, Dr Milton Moon AM began his pottery career almost 60 years ago, there wasn’t in his wildest dreams any thought that a potter could be honoured with a university qualification.
A little bewildered, but nonetheless delighted to be awarded an honorary doctorate at the UniSA graduations in August, Dr Moon explained that his pottery was learned, not in any school, but from traditionally-trained potters who had a direct link to the pioneer potters of this country.
"I was an ex-serviceman and a friend Harry Memmott and I were looking for new directions in a post-war world. Memmott was the grandson of a Queensland pioneer potter, and a working partner in the old family pottery named Mervyn Feeney became our teacher.
"Feeney was a very intelligent person who was also a chemist and an engineer, and it was our good fortune that no better teacher than him could have been found, even if our learning was informal," Dr Moon said.
"Harry and I both became teachers and I recall having a battle royal with authorities at Queensland’s Technical Education Department when attempting to introduce a two-year part-time certificate course in pottery. Pottery courses at technical colleges were mainly to provide hobby activities to - as I rudely put it - keep bored housewives out of pubs and off the streets, but they proved to be extremely talented and purposeful students," he said.
Ignoring the authorities, Dr Moon conducted his own non-qualification courses before coming to South Australia where, very quickly, certificate, then diploma courses were introduced. These were later upgraded to a bachelor course.
Teaching was modelled on the workshop method that Dr Moon had learned from Feeney using only the most basic things that the student would need (or could afford) to become a potter. The students helped build kilns and fire them. At first the course was strictly structured, simply because there was too much to learn.
"Pottery courses these days are much different, offering courses up to PhD level. My son has a PhD awarded by this very University."
While some may argue that pottery is not an art, Dr Moon supports the words of Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus, who famously said that to elevate some art above the rest and call it "fine" art, is to rob all art of its basic identity and common life.