This awkwardness with the design process was exposed by Design Review in one of the few references it made to the New Zealand ceramic industry. For the British Empire Games held in Auckland in 1950 Shufflebottom modelled a commemorative mug decorated with a transfer-printed ersatz coat of arms designed by Jenkin. While praising the simplicity of the mug’s form, the commentary went on to lambaste the decoration: ‘If more care had been given to the design on the mug, which is rather tight and timid-in other words if a first rate artist had been employed to decorate it-we might have had something to be proud of.’9

Thompson p 141