Cups and Handles

Cups and handles were made separately at Crown Lynn. To form the handles liquid clay, known as slip, is poured into plaster moulds. Once the slip becomes leather hard, the handles are carefully removed and trimmed to size.

In another part of the factory the cup body was made on a machine called a jolley, which squashed clay into a cup mould. The handle was then attached to the cup with more slip before the first firing.

In the early days Crown Lynn had troubles with the handles falling off the cups. “We didn’t know how to stick the damn things on”, explained Tom Clark, who started the crockery business in the 1940s. They soon overcame this and went on to produce many different cup and handle designs.

Kapu me te Kakau

I whakawehea te hanganga o ngā kapu me ngā kakau i Crown Lynn. E hangaia ai ngā kakau, ka riringihia he uku waiwai e kīia nei ko te ‘slip’ ki ngā anga hangarewa. Kia kirikau rawa te maro o te slip, ka āta tangohia ngā kakau, ā, ka whaoa ki tana rahi tika.

I tētahi atu wāhanga o te wheketere i hangaia te tinana o te kapu ki tētahi mihini e kīia nei ko te jolley, ko tana mahi he pēhi uku ki ngā anga hangarewa kapu. Kātahi ka tāpirihia te kakau ki te kapu ki ētahi slip anō i mua i te tuku ki te umuuku.

I te timatangata ake i pā tētahi raru ki a Crown Lynn i te takahanga o ngā kakau i ngā kapu. “Kāore mātou i mōhio ki whakapiri i ngā mea rā’, te whakamārama atu a Tom Clark, nāna te kamupene matapaia nei i timata i ngā tau 1940. Ka whai hua tēnā rapanga, ā, he nui anō ngā tauira kapu me ngā kakau i waihangatia.

 

A large community of workers crafted Crown Lynn pieces daily in a production process that, while mechanised, required skilled hands to mould, shape, glaze, grind, fire and pack our much-loved national ceramics.

Māori and Pasifika were an essential part of Crown Lynn’s manufacturing processes.  Coming to the city from rural communities, many Māori worked across the different departments in the factory. In the ‘handle room’ almost all the workers were wāhine Māori. One manager remarked, they could “make a cup handle look as though it had grown with the rest of the cup.”

During the late 1960s and 1970s, when production increased to fifteen million items a year and products were exported worldwide, the company went to the Pacific Islands to attract workers.  By 1981, thirty-two percent of Crown Lynn workers were Samoan, and Māori and Pasifika languages were commonplace. This workforce was crucial to the success story of Crown Lynn.

He hapori nui o ngā kaimahi i hanga matapaia Crown Lynn i ia rā i roto mai i ngā tukanga hanganga, hakoa whiua ki te mihini, he ringa rehe tonu i whakamahia hei kōmiri, hei pokepoke, hei whakamōhinu, hei oro, hei whakawera me te whakawhāiti i ngā matapaia e arohanuitia nei e te motu.

He wāhanga nui ngā iwi Māori me te Pasifika o te tukanga hanganga o Crown Lynn. I te nukuhanga atu ki te taone i ngā hapori o tuawhenua, he tokomaha ngā Māori i mahi ki ngā wāhanga rerekē o te wheketere. Ko te nuinga o ngā kaimahi i te ‘rūmā kakau’ he wahine Māori. I kīia e tētahi o ngā kaiwhakahaere, ka pai noa “tā rātou hanga kakau kapu me te mea nei i tupu ki te toenga o te kapu.”

I waenga i ngā tau 1960 me te 1970, ka piki ake te hanganga ki te tekau mā rima matapaia i ia tau me te kaweake ki tāwahi whānui, ka haere te kamupene ki Te Moana nui a Kiwa ki te whakarata kaimahi. Nō te tau 1981, toru tekau mā rua paihēneti o ngā kaimahi o Crown Lynn he Hāmoa, he Māori, ā, ko ngā reo o Te Moana nui a Kiwa he wāhi taurikura. Nā tēnei hapori mahi i ora ai a Crown Lynn.