Between 1932 and 1938 Anne Dangar sent several consignments of pottery and other works to Sydney to be shared among her friends and family. Sadly, as Dangar’s correspondence records, many early consignments arrived broken and had to be glued together but, as Mary Alice Evatt, artist and advocate for modern art, later recalled, this allowed them to study her forms and designs closely: ‘we all helped, and this truly made you feel shapes were important’
As well as serving an instructive purpose, Dangar earned some income through the work she sent to Australia. She initially sold her pots through Margaret Jaye’s store in Sydney, but by September 1932 grew frustrated with the amount Jaye charged and asked friend and fellow artist Grace Crowley to sell them for ‘honest prices’ on her behalf.
Crowley did so, and even displayed Dangar’s ceramics in small exhibitions in her studio, where they were viewed by the wider artistic community in Sydney. Many of Dangar’s friends and former students acquired examples of her pottery in this way, but she also sent specific pieces as gifts to friends and family, as payment for the loan of money, as well as on commission.
In 1937, via Crowley, she sent her cousin Effie Mills (known as Fairy), decorated tiles to be assembled as a tiled tabletop and a group of beer mugs monogrammed ‘RF’ for Rah Fizelle which are all displayed in this gallery. Evatt and her husband HV ‘Doc’ Evatt who was Federal Attorney-General, External Affairs Minister and later President of the UN General Assembly, were well-known advocates of modern art, and particularly supportive of Dangar’s work, paying her 1000 francs in 1938 for a commission of ceramics valued at far less by Dangar. Despite his dislike for modern art, even Julian Ashton showed his support, using his influence as a well-known, senior Sydney figure to release one of Dangar’s consignments from customs when there was an issue with import in 1936.
