BACKGROUND:
Unlike most of the chinaware's, ceramic's and porcelain that our family is seeking new homes for, the origin of the artist would seem to be mystery. More about this shortly.
This is yet another "pick up" on one of our frequent trips around the regional galleries and "curio" stores many years ago, we were active in this sort of activity during the 1990's but we are certain that this piece dates from somewhere around the 1960's ~ 1970's
Some misnomers exist about the Royal Lustrina distinctive range of ceramic wares although with good reason because there is not a lot of factual information about the tradename and who was behind it.
One thing for sure, the ceramic vase was originally a blank and most likely imported from Japan. This occurred a lot during this period with ceramic or china blanks being imported and then locally applied "finishing touches" and decorations.
This is lustre ware, meaning that the artists painted these striking silhouette designs of Australian bushland and birds, often set against a background depicting something like a sunrise or sunset background. On this particular piece, the artist has used a very dark Greenish almost Black primary colour for the detail, just this one colour. The background colouring is a vibrant Lemon Yellow around most of the decoration i.e if the vase is rotated this background changes. Finished with a single ring of Gold gilding around the mouth of the vase. The backstamp is also stamped using Gold metallic paint. Once the decorating is finished, the vase is then coated with a mixture of metallic salts or oxides and organic binders to the vase surface, then the vase would have been re-fired in a kiln with restricted oxygen, reducing the oxides into ultra-thin pure metal.
The result is the lustre effect, a subtle yet noticeable change in the way light is reflected off the vase - something like the "Pearl effect" that can often be seen on Japanese vases.
The decorations and re-firing to create this lustre is what grabbed our attention and the vase should only be considered as a piece of Australiana ceramic decoration, not a vase that was created entirely here in Australia.
The name Royal Lustrina has nothing to do with England or the Royal Family! This was a marketing technique (the use of the word Royal) to suggest such a connection ... there isn't any.
Very little factual information appears to be available ANYWHERE about just who was behind Royal Lustrina or even where they were located - we suspect the business was quite short lived and certainly doesn't seem to have much of a historical history recorded.
ROYAL LUSTRINA - Small Vase
Vase (blank) origin most likely is Japan
Creativity origin is definitely Australian. Some other pieces of these ceramics have been found with AUSTRALIA included on the backstamp but they seem to be pretty few and far between.
Circa 1960's ~ 1970's
115mm height x 95mm wide near the top
35mm diameter mouth (for the flowers)
Silhouette style of artistry, well done although I wouldn't call it exceptionally skilled work - it suffices! The brush strokes are clean, any "slips of the brush" are easily disguised by the scenes depicted and with the use of a single colour, no intricate colour bleeding issues. The Yellow background lighting colouring doesn't seem to have brush strokes, at least I couldn't see any when looking extremely closely ... it looks more like an airbrush technique was used for this background colour.
To best visualise this vase and the changing depiction and colouring as it is rotated, I have taken five photographs of the vase, each rotated about 70 degrees from the previous photograph.
Suitable for small floral arrangements or as a stand-alone decorative piece.
COSMETIC CONDITION:
Clean
NO cracks
NO chips
NO crazing
I cannot see any superficial damage to any of the decoration, although I did need to do a "double take" around the mouth to check that the Gold band around the mouth is not supposed to also flow over the lip, it doesn't and it appears it was never intended to so that lip has a slightly "unfinished" look (see the photograph)
I did notice a couple of little "dibs" on the side of the vase where the second firing was quite even and left just a couple of very small upwards facing "dibs" not lumps and certainly these are not chips on the side.
A nice attractive little vase, if only from the perspective of the Australiana themed artwork ...
