Jug with solanum design

Ada Newman was a watercolourist, china painter and potter, and a leading figure in the ceramics movement in early 20th-century New South Wales. China painting was a specialised art form in which artists decorated pre-made porcelain objects, although Newman also began to make her own pottery from the late 1920s. She would usually design and paint directly onto porcelain without the assistance of underdrawing and fire her objects in a kiln – sometimes multiple times – to achieve the desired colour and sheen in the glaze.

'Jug with solanum design' represents Newman’s adoption of art nouveau aesthetics, popular in the decorative arts and painting. Her solanum design makes clever use of the plant’s fruit and flower, which serve as both languid undergrowth and elegant canopy, separated by lithe stalks. This organic linework is characteristic of art nouveau, which sought to imbue everyday objects with nature’s rhythms.