BOWL - STATE BRICKWORKS

Between 1946 and 1961, the company produced a range of ‘Fancy Wear’ called Wembley Ware and became one of the most popular range of Australian produced ceramics and was sold all across the country and in New Zealand.
In the 1890s, the Armadale to Byford area was identified as having excellent clay and shale deposits for brick making and by the early 1900s had two private commercial brickworks operating at Cardup and Armadale. In 1913, the Labor Scaddan Government, who after winning government in 1911 implemented a program of state run enterprises, opened the State Brickworks in Byford and extended the Armadale line to the town so bricks could be easily transported from the site.
In November 1950, a second State Brickworks site was opened in Armadale between Southwestern Highway and the railway line and by 1952 it was producing enough bricks to build 80 homes a week. It was possibly around this time that the State Brickworks commissioned Bristile China to produce a crockery for its sites.
In 1961, both State Brickworks sites were sold to the construction company Hawker Siddeley Group Ltd, with the Byford site closed in 1964 and the Armadale site operating as a brickworks through to the early 2000s.