Page 74 - Bulletin 9 2005

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The word ‘pottery’ in Conrand’s name seems to indicate that Cullinan intended from the start
to produce not only bricks and pipes at Olifantsfontein but also domestic pottery to compete

with the mass-produced imported tableware that dominated the South African market at that
time. His second son, Rowland, was sent to Stoke-on-Trent to study ceramic techniques, and

in 1907 he invited tenders for building a pottery factory, a manager’s house and workmen’s
cottages to accommodate skilled artisans he was arranging to bring out from England.

Experimental items using Olifantsfontein clay had already been made successfully by Harold

Emery of Stoke-on-Trent, who was commissioned by Cullinan to purchase equipment in
England and recruit suitable staff for the new factory. The group of some 30 potters that

arrived in South Africa was led by Emery and consisted of people with very specialized

occupations, such as oven builder, potter’s joiner, tile maker, potter’s warehouse man, mould
maker, pottery fireman, sanitary ware presser, saggar maker, potter’s oven odd man,
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paintress, slip maker, and transferer. Special down-draught kilns were constructed for the
new undertaking, which was known as the Transvaal Potteries.

Cullinan’s ‘potters’ village’ included a hostel for about 80 orphaned South African children

who were apprenticed to the English potters. Unfortunately the latter did not find

Olifantsfontein very congenial: isolated from any towns, and situated on the treeless
grasslands of the Transvaal highveld, it must have been an inhospitable place for town

dwellers used to the public houses and other social amenities of Staffordshire.

Despite strenuous efforts by Cullinan to promote the products of the new factory his
pioneering venture was short-lived. Consumer prejudice against locally made crockery,

inadequate tariff protection from mass-produced overseas tableware, and high railage costs

all combined to make the local products uneconomical, forcing Cullinan reluctantly to close
this section of the Olifantsfontein works in May 1914. Examples of the tableware made by

Cullinan’s potters survive in museum collections, and the undecorated glazed tiles produced

by the Transvaal Potteries were used in many buildings, including the Union Buildings in
Pretoria.

Olifantsfontein and the Ceramic Studio

Most of the imported work-force was repatriated, and the kilns, workshops and potters’