Exceptional Convict Pottery from the 1820s found in Tasmania

When self-described 'mad collector' Rod Goss acquired a second-hand chipped vase in the 1980s, a curious marking on the bottom led him on a decades-long quest to discover its history.

Our very own Graham Wilson helped Rod identify the ‘exceptional piece’. Graham described the vase as:

“A quantum leap to what was being produced in the colonies” and that there would only be a “handful of objects of a similar quality and date coming from the colonial potteries in Australia.”

It turns out the vase was made by a convict potter in the 1820s and reveals significant insight into the creative abilities within the early colonies.