“In the Northern Territory there are Aborigines.” Stereotyping Australian states and Territories on 1950s gift and souvenir ware

This paper examines segmented serving platters produced by Vandé pottery (Sydney) in the 1950s as part of a broader study of mid-twentieth-century Australian gift and souvenir ware. Drawing on Indigenist standpoint theory, it explores how these objects participate in settler-colonial constructions of nation and race. Empirically, the study is based on a systematically compiled corpus of privately held platters sourced through online object and image searches, supplemented by archival research on Vandé and its artists, Alice Myee Pierce and Elaine Glasson. A hierarchical cluster analysis of motif combinations was undertaken to identify relationships among eight platters. The analysis distinguishes three clusters that align with artist attributions and key iconographic choices, particularly in the Western Australian and Northern Territory segments. Across the set, each state is reduced to one or two visual tropes—cattle for Queensland, wheat for New South Wales, fruit for Victoria, grapes and wine (plus kangaroos) for South Australia, sheep and either emus or Indigenous men for Western Australia, and an Indigenous elder’s head for the Northern Territory. Comparing these tropes with demographic data, contemporary pictorial maps, and the political context of White Australia and assimilation policies demonstrates how Vandé’s platters re-inscribe the fiction that Indigenous Australians properly belong only in the remote north, safely distant from the settler majority.