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2 days ago | Advertorial | Kerrie Wigg

“In daylight it’s a plain white dome. Light a candle, and the lavender starts to glow.” – Myra (77) is selling the last porcelain lanterns she will ever make

For eight Christmases, Myra Rowse has cast thin porcelain lanterns on the back verandah of her weatherboard house in Epsom, just outside Bendigo, and sold them only at her church’s Christmas market. But her hands have grown slower, and at 77 she has decided this will be her last Christmas at the kiln. On 12 December, Myra switches it off for good. Her final 358 lanterns are being offered online for the first time.

Epsom, December. For seven years, the same little moment has played out at the Christmas market in the Uniting Church hall down the road, ceiling fans turning overhead. A kid picks up one of the plain white domes on Myra’s table, turns it over, finds nothing special and puts it back. Then Myra slides a lit tealight underneath it – and the kid goes completely quiet.

Out of the blank porcelain, a whole picture appears: lavender and butterflies, Santa’s sleigh over the rooftops, a little church in the snow. Glowing warm and gold, as if somebody had painted it with light.

“Where did the picture come from?” the kids always ask. And Myra always answers the same way: “It was there all along, love. It just needed a bit of light.”

A grandmother’s night-light and 33 years of moulds

The story begins with a night-light. Myra’s grandmother had come out from Cornwall with one small treasure: a porcelain lamp panel that looked like nothing at all in the daytime. At night, with a candle behind it, a little picture of a mill by a stream appeared in it. “I’d lie in her spare bed and stare at that mill until I fell asleep,” Myra says. “I reckoned it was magic.”

It wasn’t magic. It was a lithophane – a very old craft in which a picture is pressed into thin, unglazed porcelain. Where the porcelain is thin, the light shines through brightly. Where it is thick, it stays dark. The picture only exists when there is a light behind it.

At 21, Myra started in the mould room of a pottery in Bendigo. For 33 years she carved and cast the plaster moulds that the pottery’s plates, jugs and teapots were made in, until she retired in 2003. “I made moulds longer than I’ve done anything else in my life,” she laughs. “I can read a bit of porcelain like the paper.”

The first lantern, Christmas 2018

The first lantern was never meant to be sold. It was December 2018, and Myra wanted to make her husband Rex something special for Christmas: the row of lavender he had planted along the front fence for her, purple every Christmas.

Myra remembered her grandmother’s lamp. Over two weeks on the verandah, she carved Rex’s lavender in reverse into a plaster mould: the long stems, the grasses, two butterflies. She cast it in porcelain so thin you could see your fingers through it, fired it, and on Christmas Eve she set it on the little table next to Rex’s chair with a tealight inside.

“He sat down in front of it and didn’t say a word for a long time,” Myra says. “Then he said: ‘There’s my lavender. There’s the fence.’ That was the moment I knew I’d make more.”

From one lantern to more than 2,500

The ladies from church saw it at Myra’s place and wanted one. Then their daughters wanted one. Then people started driving over from Castlemaine and Echuca. Over eight Christmases, Myra has cast more than 2,500 lanterns in eight designs, each with its own story: the Lavender Meadow that started it all, Santa's Sleigh for her grandson, the Snowmen and the Winter Village (“none of us has ever had a white Christmas, which is exactly why people love them”), the Angels, the Nativity for the church, the Robin for the English Christmas cards her grandmother used to get, and the Cats for the two old tabbies that sleep on her workbench.

Not one was ever sold in a shop or online. Only at the church market and from Myra’s front verandah – which is why, outside central Victoria, almost nobody has ever seen one.

What makes Myra’s lanterns so special

In daylight they look almost too simple: a small matt white dome on a matching saucer, with a fine relief you only notice up close. Then the candle goes in.

Each lantern is a dome of unglazed bisque porcelain, 11.5 centimetres across and 7.8 centimetres tall, sitting on its own porcelain saucer. You lift the dome off, set a tealight on the saucer, put the dome back – and the scene lights up from inside in soft gold, with real depth: the lavender stems glow brighter than the sky, Santa’s sleigh stands out against the stars, every feather of the robin shows. A battery LED tealight works just as well, for a bedside table, a kid’s room or a whole evening without a flame.

“People always ask what it’s like the first time they light it,” she says. “The room goes quiet. Somebody switches off the big light. And then everybody just looks at it.” No cables, no tangle of fairy lights: one small candle, and a whole little scene glows on the windowsill while the evening gets dark outside. It is the kind of light that makes a lounge room feel like Christmas Eve.

“Every year one more for the windowsill”

Myra keeps an old biscuit tin on the shelf above her workbench. It is full of Christmas cards from customers. One family in Kangaroo Flat has bought a new design every December since 2020 – six of the eight now stand on their windowsill, the grandkids argue every year about who gets to light them, and this year they’re after the last two. Another card simply says: “Mum passed in October. Her Angels lantern was the first thing I lit in my own house.”

“That’s the part I’ll miss,” Myra says. “Not the casting. Knowing whose window they’re glowing in.”

“I’d rather stop while they still come out right”

One evening in late August, after a long day at the worktable, Myra noticed her hands were aching more than usual. She sat with a cup of tea for a long while, rubbing her fingers, and then rang her granddaughter Tahnee. “I’m 77, and my hands just don’t want to keep up any more,” she says quietly. “I’d rather stop while every lantern still comes out the way it should.” So in September she planned one last big firing – and then that’s it.

She doesn’t make a fuss about it. But when she talks about this year’s church market – the first in seven years without her table – she goes quiet for a moment and looks out of the window.

358 lanterns – then that’s it

On the shelves of the old shed out the back, wrapped in tissue paper in old wooden fruit boxes, sit the last lanterns Myra will ever make: 358 of them – this spring’s firing, plus every lantern she had kept back for this year’s market. Around 45 of each design.

It was Tahnee, 26, who talked her into offering them online for the first time. “She said: Nan, there are people in Perth and Cairns who’d love these and will never come to Epsom,” Myra says. She agreed on one condition: until her last day at the kiln, the price stays what it has always been at the church market – fifty-nine dollars.

“I’ve asked fifty-nine dollars since the very first market,” she says. “Nobody does this for the money. And I’m not going to get greedy on my way out.” The special price applies until 12 December. After that, the remaining lanterns will keep going out at the shop’s regular price – but only until the last one is gone.

What sets Myra’s lanterns apart:

What owners say

“The gift that comes out every December for the next 25 years”

Many of Myra’s lanterns were never meant for the buyer’s own windowsill. “Most people buy two,” Myra says. “One for themselves and one for their mum, their daughter, a neighbour who’s on their own this year.” A lantern for a first home. It needs no power point, no batteries if you use a real candle, it arrives wrapped in tissue paper, and it comes out of its box every December for decades.

Where can you get Myra’s lanterns?

Myra’s lanterns are only available through Backroad Goods, a small online shop for Christmas gifts from independent makers. Only there will you get the original lanterns from Myra’s verandah in Epsom. Look-alike porcelain lanterns from mass production have started to appear on big marketplaces. At first glance they may look similar, but they have nothing to do with Myra’s work.

12 December – then that’s it

On 12 December, Myra will switch off her kiln for the last time. “Eight Christmases,” she says, and looks at the fruit boxes on the shelves. “That’s a good innings. I’d just like every one of these to be glowing in somebody’s window this year.”

If you would like one of the original lanterns from Myra’s final firing, don’t wait too long. The special price ends on 12 December, and with the first-ever online sale, the 358 lanterns are not expected to last long after that.

Disclaimer: this article is a sponsored post and contains advertising. Prices and availability may vary.