WANTED, a gentleman of good education, physical courage, initiative, dedication and creative abilities. Must have interest in stone, glass and ceramic work and be capable of bringing own ideas to successful finalisation.

Keith Murray, born Keith Day Pearce Murray at Auckland, New Zealand, in 1892, would have filled to the letter any such advertisement, but his career was so full that no attempt to condense his capabilities into a few meagre lines could convey the essence of this remarkable craftsman's accomplishments.

With his education at King's College, Auckland, the Mill Hill School, London, and the Architectural Association's School of Architecture behind him, Keith Murray became involved in the 1914-1918 war when he donned the uniform of the Royal Flying Corps. He quickly gained the coveted "wings" of a pilot, and in 1917 was awarded the Military Cross for his exploits.

After the cessation of hostilities he applied himself with the same kind of fervour to architectural designing. A successful career unfolded before him, culminating in his election, in 1939, to the Fellowship of the Royal Institute of British Architects. In the course of his architectural life, he developed a close  working association with Sir John Simpson, Roger Atkinson and Maxwell Ayrton, and became a partner in the architectural firm of Ramsay, Murray & White. But it is the emergence of his desire to design and create in materials other than stone and brick that arouses the interest of present day collectors and students of pottery and glass.

For many years, old English glass with exquisite but simple forms had exerted an attraction on Keith Murray which proved to be more than a passing fancy. His interest in a material that captured and reflected the purity of light was deep rooted, and the depressive years of the slump gave him the opportunity to devote considerable time to the study and drawing of selected pieces.

He turned to glass designing, but although his sketches caused some interest when shown to James Powell & Sons Ltd (later Whitefriars), the well known glass manufaturers, they were unfortunately not prepared to market his designs. However, this step resulted in his introduction by Marriot Powell in 1931 to the London manager of the Wedgwood pottery firm.

From this introduction stemmed an agreement whereby Keith Murray was to become more or less a freelance outworker, creating and designing his own wares in his own time for Wedgwood. This entailed frequent visits to their factory at Etruria,

Stoke-on-Trent, and by 1933 Wedgwood's appreciation opened the way to his full-time occupation of designing new forms for the company.

Although this association continued throughout the Thirties, he did not abandon his love of glassware, and during this period he designed many modern pieces for Steven's & Williams Ltd, also designing pieces in silver and electroplate for Mappin & Webb.

His skills were again called upon in 1936, when Wedgwood decided that, despite modernisation carried out at the Etruria factory, business prospects necessitated entirely new premises to satisfy increasing market demands. Keith Murray, as an architect, was the company's natural choice for designing the new factory, and with Tom Wedgwood, who was responsible for building and plant, he toured the USA and Europe seeking ideas and advice on modern ceramic plant design.

Left - Immediately recognisable as Keith Murray ware, this vase of 1939 uses the traditional method of throwing and turning to create a modern effect. Decorated in Moonstone in has a vlaue of £25-£30. Right - Sculptural as well as functional, this horizontally fluted vase of 1939 is very much a collectors piece, decorated in Matt Green. Marked with Keith Murray's signature and 7inches high, it is valued at £30-£40.

This was a fruitful experience which enabled plans to be drawn up and submitted by late 1937. The plans were approved and in 1938, with due ceremony, the foundation stone was laid. Within two years the first stage, the Fine Earthenware section, was completed, but because of war time conditions rebuilding was deferred until 1945, and it was not until 1950 that the factory went into full production.

From this postwar period the pottery industry lost the undeniable talents of Keith Murray, as he became more and more involved in the development of his architectural practice. This man who became, during the 1930's, one of the leading exponents of the design of Art Deco ceramics and to a lesser degree glass and metal, wa to design no more for Wedgwood.

This left wedgwood holding a monopoly on the designed pottery shapes that he had executed for their exclusive use, a situation which followed closely the normal practice of the company which, since it's formation in 1759, had invited the collaboration of eminent designers and artists in the production of their high quality ceramics.

The talents drawn upon by Wedgwood during the 1920's and 1930's included notable sculptors and modellers such as John Skeaping and Arnold Machin, and designers of high ability such as Eric Ravillious, Millicent Taplin, Victor Skellern and Daisy Makeig-Jones. Of this top-class design team the member to gain the highest recognition was Keith Murray, designing pottery shapes in new forms suitable for contemporary mass-production.

Although his primary objective was to see the producytion of his many designs in earthenware, he did on occasion turn his attention to china wares. A notable example of this is his monogrammed, platinum and green decorated Savoy Hotel tableware and his "Lotus" pattern design for use in decorating Wedgwood fine china tea sets. This incursion into a specialised section of the industry provided him with a high degree of personal satisfaction.

Using traditional Wedgwood techniques and clay bodies, Keith Murray applied his skills to producing a variety of items, predominently giftware in well known Wedgwood media: Black basalt, a fine grained stoneware introduced by Josiah Wedgwood in the 1760's; Queen's ware, the fine earthenware of an ivory or cream colour and Slipware, which combined the use of different coloured clays to great effect. Lastly, he employed an innovation introduced by Wedgwood during the early 1930's, the Matt Glazed wares.

His output included bowls, vases, ashtrays, and cigarette boxes, beer mugs and jugs, inkstands and his well known design for the Wedgwood "Commonwealth" table service, produced during the post-war years.The li--- provides an insight into the fund ---design ideas he commanded. There were also designs which achieved their effect by use of the time-honoured Wedgwood technique of throwing and turning. This imparted a crispness of form, often architectural in appearance, which characterised Keith Murray wares.

He re-introduced the old technique of "engine-turning", using a version of the lathe designed by Matthew Bolton for Wedgwood during the 18th century, furthering his search for perfection and balance and introducing into much his work geometric, diced and fluted incised designs.

One of the most attactive uses of this technique, producing shapes in both classical and contemporary styling, can be seen in Keith Murray's slipware range. He created the shapes on the potter's wheel in a cream coloured clay and dipped the finished items ina contrasting clay slip, producing two colour designs by the adroit use of the lathe. The biting of the lathe through the overlaid colour to expose the ground colour affoded condiderable scope for his designing talents, and indeed, wares such as the champagne with ivory and Celedon green with cream are most attractive.

With an artisan of his inventiveness it comes as some surprise to find that he was rather conservative in his selection of colour glazes. Not for him the hard, brilliant glazes favoured by so many of his contemporaries, but rather the soft feel and appearance of matt finishes. Although his Moonstone, Matt Straw and Matt Green glazes were applied to the widest selection of his designs, selected pieces were glazed in a combination of two or three colours, occasionally with platinum decoration. This limitation of glazing colours - generally only one colour was used - ensured that attention was not distracted from the overall form by inappropriate glazes.

This emphasis on form, seen throughout his design work - in glass, metal and ceramics - won him early acclaim. In 1935, examples of his pottery were exhibited at the Royal Academy's British Art in Industry exhibition. Later in the same year, The Medici Galleries in London promoted a one-man show of his work, considered by many as a triumph for the modern design movement.   Further acknowledgment of his contribution to modern design came with election to the faculty of Royal Designers for Industry in 1936, the year it was founded.

Throughout the following years Keith Murray's work could be seen on display at all the major exhibitions on modern design, including the "Britain Can Make It" show of 1946 and the |RoyalDesigners for Industryexhibition in 1948 on "Design at Work", in which the main feature was devoted to the design history of his Commonwealth table service designed  for Wedgwood. Other notable exhibits were the hand amde glass wares designed by James Hogan and the pottery of  Susie Cooper, both sharing the honour with Keith Murray of being a Royal Designer for Industry.

Keith Murray's wares, although just a small proportion of Wedgwood's 1930's output, were nevertheless produced on a limited mass-production scale until the mid 1950's, a factor that has a considerable bearing on the high prices now commanded by much of his wares. All (?) his pieces are well marked with a facsimile signature or his initials "KM", accompanied by the Wedgwood mark. Bookends, inkstands and lamp bases can command prices rising up to the £50 mark. Design, decoration and scarcity, as with his Black Basalt and platinum decorated pieces, will play an important part fo finalising a price.

Smaller items such as his beer mugs can be bought for as little as £3 to £10 for the more decorative examples. , whiule the more commonly found vases and bowls fetch between £15 and £35 each. As much as £50 to £70 is asked for larger examples of the same variety. Coffee sets, not always easy to come by and much sought after by collectors, attract very high prices, again depending on decoration.

The most likely places to indulge in Keith Murray, apart from the usual London antiques markets, would be Harvey Daniels' Ziggurat at Brighton, or Cunards, Art Deco Ceramics of Islington Green, N1, but the wares do not remain for long.

In the design work of Keith Murray we can see more of the many decorative influences prevalent in the Twenties and Thirties. His modernist approach to design and working philosophy that "Form follows Function" is clearly reflected in much of his work. Even his beer mugs, mundane objects in themselves, were described by art critic Herbert Read as "better than anything else in modern English ceramics".

Keith Murray's wares have been acclaimed as the most pleasing ceramic achievement of the 1930's, and they also represent the final attempt of the potter-designer to achieve complete harmony of function and aesthetic appeal before the advent of the mass production of moulded plastics and other synthetic material.

Primarily an architect, Keith Murray's venture into the world of ceramics lasted a mere decade or so. Over that short period he became a considerable influence on contemporary styling. With the Victoria & Albert and other major museums throughout the country exhibiting his wares, his position as one of the world's leading exponents of the Art deco style is established.

The author would like to thank Keith Murray for information and photographs generously supplied for this article.

AMENDMENTS:  All images shown here are property of keithmurray.net and third parties and replace the originals supplied by Keith Murray to Graham Crossingham-Gower. Some minor alterations have been made to text to accomodate for the new images. These have been replaced with as close an item as possible and are not detremental to the original text.

Please note : All prices given in the article are as printed in 1976 and should not be taken as a guide to current prices (more's the pity!!)