English: Dish, with hand painted abstract design of bird Dutch-born designer Frank Carpay (b 1917 - d 1985) was employed by the Auckland commercial pottery, Crown Lynn. He was employed as a designer from 1953-6 of one-off pieces in the ‘Specials Department’. professionally trained designer. There is a more thorough glimpse of the brief, yet pivotal, time spent with Pablo Picasso and his work at the Madoura Pottery in Vallauris, France in 1950. At Picasso’s insistence, Carpay met with two other pottery decorators, Roger Capron and Roger Picault, also working in Vallauris. Carpay returned home with several of their works. Although Carpay presented a work to Picasso, regrettably, there remains the deliciously tantalising question of why the gift was not reciprocated. Carpay's passage from the Netherlands to New Zealand is now given greater detail- unemployed Carpay saw an image of Auckland City featuring palm trees on a postcard. He wrote to directly to John Allum (then Mayor of Auckland) for the name of a pottery where he could find work. As a result, this letter was passed to Tom Clark, who created a job for him at his Crown Lynn factory. Arriving in New Zealand in 1953, Carpay joined others like Mirek Smisek and ex-Wedgwood thrower Ernest Shufflebottom. They had been recruited to the ‘Specials Department’ of the fledgling Crown Lynn to produce more upmarket works from their existing commercial production-line wares. As an assured designer, Carpay was immediately able to begin articulating his existing ideas on numerous readymade production line blanks. There is both fluidity and individuality in the painting of these pots and there appears little evidence of trial and error. As he quite quickly produced hundreds of works, there was seemingly no end to his creative capacity as his productivity flourished at Crown Lynn. Lloyd-Jenkins is able to shed light on the natural limitations of the domestic functional ware as a starting point for his designs and the subsequent use of individually thrown wares from the factory. As can be seen in works such as El Sombrero de Tres Picos, the spirit of Picasso’s Vallauris works had left a distinct impression. Carpay's designs showed a mixture of regulation and control as well as a sense of enjoyment. They are constantly alive with spontaneity and invention. Carpay’s designs remain linear with little evidence of the Delftware watercolour techniques in his designs. This is significant now that we know that Carpay declined work at de Delft Blauw factory in the Netherlands. Carpay’s one-off designs were meant to go into wider production. Tom Clark set strategies in place to increase the market acceptance of Carpay’s work. He had work accepted into art society exhibitions, where he won awards and was critically acclaimed, working displays and at department stores. Some were retailed through Brenner Associates and Stocktons. Despite these strategic attempts to introduce Carpay’s designs to the New Zealand market, they failed to be well received by consumers.