page_title: Crown Lynn
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Crown Lynn / Early history
caption_attribution_description: English: Vase, "Kiwi", possibly an early form
context_page_description: Crown Lynn was a New Zealand ceramics manufacturer that operated under various names between 1854 and 1989.
context_section_description: The pottery's origins started with an 1854 land purchase at Hobsonville, near Auckland, by Rice Owen Clark. He had arrived in New Zealand thirteen years before and had previously worked as a school teacher in Wellington and as a clerk in Auckland. To drain his land, he made his own pipes by wrapping logs with clay and firing them with charcoal. This first production led to his making pipes for his neighbours, and by the 1860s he had a thriving pipeworks. His success encouraged a number of others to form similar small companies. In 1929 the various small producers merged to become the Amalgamated Brick and Pipe Company.
  Clark's plant moved from Hobsonville to New Lynn, Auckland, in 1925. New Lynn offered better clay, more access to workers and a rail siding close by.
  Tom Clark, one of Rice Owen Clark's great-grandsons, began working in the firm during the 1930s depression. He was responsible for the plant expanding in 1937 to produce items unrelated to the building trade such as electrical insulation equipment and moulds for rubber products such as gloves, baby bottle teats and condoms. Clark was an employer who always encouraged his staff to experiment with new products. As a result, an oil-fired continuous tunnel kiln was built in 1941, and tableware manufacture began the following year. The company had established a research department in 1938 to investigate the viability of producing tableware from New Zealand clays.
caption: Kiwi spill vase
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