The Nelson region has a population of approximately 80,000 people and is located at the top of the South Island of New Zealand. It is a quiet and sunny part of the country that specialises in horticulture and seafood. During the 1960s and 1970s the district gained a reputation as a centre of excellence in craft – particularly pottery. The reputation has continued to the present day founded to a large extent on the developments that took place in the two decades between 1956 and 1976. This article looks at how that reputation emerged and at some of the wider issues that surrounded the growth of pottery that were common to both New Zealand and Australia.
On becoming the new Director of Nelson’s Suter Art Gallery in 1976, Austin Davies faced a financial problem. Needing to generate income, he organised a huge craft pottery exhibition and sale: ‘Queues for the exhibition stretched around Queen’s Gardens’ lake. “We charged people $2 to get in and made a $13,000 profit – it paid my salary for the next year,”’[1] he recounted.[2] A number of years later, reflecting on his first years as a potter, former Czech refugee and internationally known potter, Mirek Smišek, wrote, ‘In the nineteen fifties there were no potters in Nelson and in other parts of New Zealand pottery making was a part-time activity.’[3]
Between 1956, when Smišek became one of New Zealand’s first professional studio potters, working in Nelson, and the 1976 exhibition at the Suter Art Gallery, the number of people involved in the studio pottery movement nationally had ballooned from one committed craftsman to thousands of full-time potters, enthusiastic amateurs, and appreciative supporters and customers.[4] As a result of this growth Nelson, which eventually had more potters per head of population than any other area in New Zealand, gained an international reputation as a centre of excellence in studio pottery.[5] Smišek appears to have sensed the potential for growth when he decided to make his living as a full-time potter in 1956: ‘It [the support of people in Nelson] gave you immediately a feeling of goodwill everywhere and this positiveness – I knew I was doing the right thing.’[6]
Between the mid-1950s and the mid-1970s interest in studio pottery in Nelson proliferated to such an extent that it assisted the region to gain a reputation not just as a craft centre but also as a centre for the arts. A small group of potters came from overseas. Sometimes the immigrants were professionally trained and often they had come to New Zealand to enjoy, what they believed to be, a more fulfilling way of life. For New Zealanders who enrolled in a pottery class or joined clubs to fill in leisure time, to ‘get out of the house’,[7] to relax after work or to learn a new skill, it was an opportunity to revive the satisfaction they had felt from the craftwork they had been exposed to at school. The combining of the two cultures produced an ideal teacher / student environment. Many of the students, often to their own surprise and delight, became professional craftsmen and craftswomen. For those who wished to pursue a career in the arts, pottery provided an art-form that was readily accepted by a buying public that was eager to own a piece of ‘art’ that could also be ‘useful’. Both groups rode a wave of public support that encouraged and sometimes surprised them. They found they were supported in an economic environment that made the work they produced very easy to sell. In another time and place these opportunities would not have been available to them.
As the studio pottery movement expanded in Nelson and across New Zealand various groups attempted to control it. The control was justified on the grounds that standards needed to be maintained to ensure that the movement’s reputation was not damaged by work of inferior quality. The New Zealand Society of Potters (NZSP) set itself up as the controller of standards – standards based largely on the inherited Anglo-Oriental traditions promoted by Bernard Leach in A Potter’s Book. It was a tradition that was based on a dubious understanding of an Oriental philosophy that itself had a questionable foundation.Leach’s influence was vital to the movement but his ideas, in some cases, stifled technical developments and set unobtainable goals and expectations in place. Furthermore, the conflict between the cult of the “unknown craftsman”, part of Leach’s imported philosophy, and western ideas of individual achievement show that eastern ideas of anonymity had little chance of achieving widespread acceptance in New Zealand.[8] Potters, such as Nelson-based Mirek Smišek, who had worked in Australia, Japan and at Leach’s pottery in Cornwall became symbols of the tradition - but they did not seek anonymity. There was also an element of cultural subservience in the reaction to the ideas that came from overseas. New Zealand potters who had not visited Japan or worked at St Ives Pottery in Cornwall may have felt inferior to those who had. Ultimately those who did wish to subscribe to the philosophy tended to select only those aspects that appealed to them.
Potters such as the English-born Jack Laird took the country-based pottery model that Leach advocated but adapted it to suit the economic and cultural conditions that existed in New Zealand. Jack and his wife Peggy established Waimea Pottery in Nelson as a country pottery but based on modern Scandinavian design. Both the design of the pottery building and the pottery itself followed this example. Those who accepted the Anglo-Oriental orthodoxy without reservation treated the Laird’s pursuit of a more commercial model with suspicion. The proponents of the Leach model set the parameters by which ‘the best’ pottery in New Zealand was judged. The clash of ideas was played out at the national exhibitions of the NZSP. To become a member of the NZSP a potter had to have work selected for the national exhibition. Royce McGlashen, the Laird’s first apprentice, for example, had his work rejected from a NZSP exhibition in the early 1970s and was told to continuing practising for a few more years. He was four years into a five-year apprenticeship at Waimea Pottery.[9] Decisions about who could become a NZSP member were not always based on quality and may have been used to send messages to those who did not accept the imported orthodoxy.
Many of the potters in Nelson had little interest in Leach’s ideas or their Anglo-Oriental roots, and the buying public did not seem to care what ‘standards’ the pottery was supposed to exemplify. The ability to sell work with relative ease meant that there seemed to be no reason for the potters to seek a deeper understanding of the philosophy behind what they were doing or feel bound to standards set by the remote arbitrators. The sale of their work to the public carried far more kudos in terms of immediate satisfaction and financial incentive than the rewards that might be gained from a distant NZSP exhibition. In addition, submitting pottery for selection based on a poorly defined set of criteria exposed potters to rejection that often appeared arbitrary and inconsistent. The control on imports in New Zealand was a critical component in the success of the movement. It was because of the restrictions on imported pottery that potters were able to sell their work with ease. The success of studio pottery in terms of sales was a by-product of far larger economic and commercial forces and conditions. Two other English immigrants, Harry and May Davis in the mid 1960s, for example, were aware that their work should use the largest commercial pottery in New Zealand, Crown Lynn Pottery, as the benchmark for the pricing of their work - and did so.[10] Hobby potters, whose sales were often modest, did not concern themselves with why their work sold and some may have seen the sales as an endorsement of their level of skill. Larger operations, such as Waimea Pottery, were however, aware that economic interests much larger than theirs were protecting them. But they also believed that their work sold easily because they had established high standards and their pottery had a unique quality to it. The public, seeing hand-made New Zealand pottery sitting alongside imported pottery in department stores, was also more accepting of the notion that pottery produced in New Zealand was as good as imported ware.
Pottery, both machine-manufactured and hand-made, were subject to fashions in the same way other consumer items were. Tom Clark, the founder of Crown Lynn Pottery, recalled that the retailers he sold to in the mid-1960s ‘would always demand “what’s new, what’s new” – “and if you’re trying to sell the same old thing, you’ve got no show”.’[11] The traditions inherited from Leach and the Orient were new and novel when they first appeared in the 1950s but, like Crown Lynn pottery, they were subject to the same public demand for ‘the new’. By the late-1960s both potters and the public wanted change. However, the standards set by the NZSP were based on the Leach tradition and change was not part of that philosophy. Some potters rebelled against the restrictions that those traditions placed on them and the stranglehold that the NZSP had on arbitrating standards. By the late-1970s new exhibitions such as the Fletcher Brownbuilt Pottery Award, that did not demand NZSP membership and offered a substantial monetary prize[12], forced the NZSP to become a much more open organisation and work seen at their later exhibitions was far more innovative.[13]
Many people became potters because it offered lifestyle choices that matched the new mood for freedom that pervaded parts of New Zealand society in the 1960s and 70s. The gap between work and play was quite distinctive in New Zealand during this time. As adults, most New Zealanders considered work to be more important than play in their lives, but they may have agreed with the American philosopher Hannah Arendt[14] who wrote:
Whatever we do, we are supposed to do for the sake of “making a living”; such is the verdict of society, and the number of people, especially in the professions who might challenge it, has decreased rapidly. The only exception society is willing to grant is the artist, who, strictly speaking, is the only “worker” left in a laboring society. … labor theories … define labor as the opposite of play. … all serious activities … are called labor … every activity which is not necessary either for the life of the individual or for the life process of society is subsumed under playfulness.[15]
The studio pottery movement was an opportunity for people to play and, using the earning of a living as a definition, work at the same time. New Zealanders appeared to have allowed, even encouraged, potters (artists) to make their play (hobby) become their work.
The New Zealand public had an ambiguous understanding of the pottery movement and potters. The belief that making pottery was not ‘a real job’ but rather a hobby, particularly where women were concerned, even when potters were earning their living from the craft. Some commentators, such as the Head of New Zealand’s Ministry of Industry and Commerce, Dr Bill Sutch, were convinced that the economic development of a country was reflected in the social position of women.[16] He believed that New Zealanders needed to take a new approach to the position of women in the workforce. Sutch proposed that the increasing number of married women in the workforce was a feature of a developed country.[17] Other trends included the growth of women working part-time and women with young children in the workforce.[18] Social policies that allowed women to undertake such work lagged behind Sutch’s ideals in New Zealand. Some women therefore, grasped the opportunity to earn income from home as a means of overcoming many of those difficulties. The role of women in the arts was informed in the public’s mind by earlier ideas that the arts were ‘a suitable accomplishment rather than an absorbing career’.[19] Women who made a very successful and lucrative career from pottery challenged those ideas. The argument also ignored the relatively even ratio of women and men, as was evident in Nelson, who were involved in the movement and the male domination of certain aspects of pottery such as throwing.
The desire to use creative skills that the New Zealand education system had, at all levels, encouraged and fostered from the mid-1940s fuelled the movement. The school system had become more child-centred and aware of the importance of play in learning. Later, adult education would help to encourage that learning for an older group who could devote more time to leisure pursuits. Many in Nelson who became involved with the movement spoke of the sense of satisfaction that making pottery by hand gave them. Karl Hils claimed, in an introduction to an instructional book on crafts, that the need to create was an almost innate human desire: ‘Craft-work is guided by an inner impulse – sometimes deriving from play – and is a manual art that promotes the development of the complete or integrated person.’[20]
The movement in Nelson, and nationally, represented, for those who took part and those who supported it, a period when they could break away from the accepted norms of a conservative society in a comparatively safe way. New Zealand, after World War Two, was a more prosperous society than at any other time in the nation’s history. Mass-produced products were becoming more abundant but choice was limited by a heavily regulated economy. The craftsperson and the work they produced were points of difference. The potter sat somewhere between the ‘worker’, who produced functional, consumer goods, and an ‘artist’, who was not tied to the conventions that other members of society were. A potter was no longer a craftsman as in earlier times and therefore the middle classes need not be concerned about lowering their status. In fact the opposite was true – some felt that their occupational status as a potter was higher. Hobbyists could also experience this freedom through their clubs and supporters through purchasing the pottery, which of course could be used in the kitchen.
When Austin Davies sought a solution to the financial problems faced by the Bishop Suter Art Gallery in 1976 he choose pottery as the art form he would feature in his summer exhibition and sale. By 1976 it was clear that hand-made pottery had huge appeal to the public of New Zealand and the visitors to Nelson. What was less clear, however, was where pottery sat in the world of art. Nelson had never seen a NZSP national exhibition because most Nelson potters were excluded from membership of the Society through rules that favoured the pioneers of the movement. To hold an exhibition of the size that Davies planned could have highlighted the conflict between standards that had been protected by the NZSP and the commercial success that potters in Nelson were experiencing. It was a conundrum with which potters had been struggling for twenty years. In addition, Davies would have been aware that both his own and the gallery’s reputation would be tarnished if his exhibition was seen as a commercial act of desperation - and yet he went ahead. The commercial side of the exhibition was huge success. Eventually the NZSP changed the restrictive rules and the earlier criteria demanded at exhibitions, based on the Anglo-Oriental standards set by Bernard Leach, were eased, permitting the most experienced potters in Nelson to go on to make their mark on the national scene. Commercial forces in the end dominated the movement in Nelson. But out of that commercial environment a generation of proficient potters went on to play a major role in the NZSP exhibitions and other national showings of New Zealand pottery. And the amateurs continued to enjoy their hobby and their modest financial success without damaging the reputation of Nelson studio pottery.
References:
Arendt, Hannah, The Human Condition, 2nd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.
Blumhardt, Doreen (ed.), New Zealand Potters. Their Work and Words, Wellington: A. H. & A. W. Reed, 1976.
Craft New Zealand. The Art of the Craftsman, Wellington: Reed, 1981.
Butterworth, Susan, The Suter. One hundred years in Nelson, Nelson: Nikau Press, 1999.
Cape, Peter, Artists and Craftsmen in New Zealand, Auckland: Collins, 1969.
Please Touch. A Survey of the Three-Dimensional Arts in New Zealand, Auckland: Collins, 1980.
Davis, Gwenny, ‘Clay, Celebrating the Creative History of Potters and Pottery in Nelson’, Nelson Provincial Museum, Opening speech, 26 May 2007.
Davis, May, May, Nelson: M. Davis, 1990.
Dover, Mic ‘Portrait of the Artist’, Nelson Mail, 20 May 2006, p.15.
Easton, Brian, The Nation Builders, Auckland: Auckland University Press, 2001.
Henderson, Carol, A Blaze of Colour. Gordon Tovey. Artist Educator, Christchurch: Hazard Press, 1998.
Hils, Karl, Crafts for All, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960.
Leach, Bernard, A Potter’s Book, London: Faber and Faber, 1940.
Mason, Helen, ‘10 Years of Pottery in New Zealand’, Special Issue of the New Zealand Potter, 1967.
Helen Mason’s Scrapbook: Fifty Years as a Backyard Potter, A Memoir, 2nd ed., Waipukurau: Limited Editions, 2005.
Monk, Valerie Ringer, Crown Lynn: A New Zealand Icon, Auckland: Penguin Books, 2006.
Nelson Evening Mail, 5 January 1977.
Nelson Mail.
New Zealand Potter.
Rice, Geoffrey W. (ed.), The Oxford History of New Zealand, 2nd ed. Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1992.
Sutch, W. B., ‘Women’s Contribution in a Changing Society’, Wellington: Industries and Commerce, 1964.
Warren, Julie, Clay: The Pottery Industry – 150 Years in Nelson, Produced by the Nelson Potters Association.
Yanagi, Sōetsu, adapted by Leach, Bernard, The Unknown Craftsman. A Japanese Insight into Beauty, 2nd ed., Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1981.
[1] Mic Dover, ‘Portrait of the Artist’, Nelson Mail, 20 May 2006, p.15. Austin Davies lectured in Art in Liverpool before emigrating to New Zealand. A story he delighted in telling young New Zealanders was about one of his worst students who he advised to give up the guitar if he was going be serious about art. The student was John Lennon.
[2] Nelson Evening Mail, 5 January 1977. Davies planned for the profit (then $4,800) to go towards the gallery modernisation fund. This earlier interview took place during the exhibition, which carried on for approximately another month giving the figure quoted.
[3] Mirek Smišek in correspondence to Peter Gibbs, editor of New Zealand Craft, circa 1990, pp. 2 – 3.
[4] By the late 1970s it was estimated that there were 2000 professional potters in New Zealand and 20,000 amateurs. See New Zealand Potter (NZP), 23:1, 1981, p. 2. In 1980 Peter Cape put the number at 5000 ‘currently working’ and ‘2000 of them … potting full-time’. See Peter Cape, Please Touch. A Survey of the Three-Dimensional Arts in New Zealand, Auckland: Collins, 1980, p. 80.
[5] One estimate put the number of club members in Nelson at 240. See Jim Chappèll in correspondence to David Nightingale, Nelson Community Potters Incorporated, 10 December 1976, Tasman Bays Heritage Trust / The Nelson Provincial Museum, Archives collection, AG 277.
[6] Mirek Smišek, interviewed by Dr. Damian H. Skinner, 17 February 1999.
[7] Doreen Blumhardt, Craft New Zealand. The Art of the Craftsman, Wellington: Reed, 1981, p. 2.
[8] Peter Cape, Please Touch, A Survey of the Three-Dimensional Arts in New Zealand, Auckland: Collins, 1980.p. 80.
[9] Julie Warren, Clay: The Pottery Industry – 150 Years in Nelson, Produced by the Nelson Potters Association. p. 20. Royce McGlashen began his apprenticeship in 1966.
[10] Gwenny Davis, ‘Clay, Celebrating the Creative History of Potters and Pottery in Nelson’, Nelson Provincial Museum, Opening speech, 26 May 2007.
[11] Valerie Ringer Monk, Crown Lynn: A New Zealand Icon, Auckland: Penguin Books, 2006, p. 74.
[12] Peter Shaw, ‘The Fletcher Challenge Ceramics Award 1977 – 1996’, The Fletcher Trust Collection, URL: http://www.fletchercollection.co.nz/ceramics.php , retrieved 14 May 2009.
[13] New Zealand Potter, 23:1, 1981. At the 23rd National Exhibition of the NZSP work by ninety-five members was displayed at the Manawatu Art Gallery alongside work by fifty-seven non-members.
[14] Hannah Arendt (1906-1975), The Internet Encyclopaedia of Philosophy retrieved 20 July 2006, from http://www.iep.utm.edu/a/arendt.htm#top
[15] Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition, 2nd ed., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998, pp. 126-7.
[16] W. B. Sutch, ‘Women’s Contribution in a Changing Society’, Wellington: Industries and Commerce, 1964, p. 5.
[17] Ibid.
[18] Ibid., pp. 8 – 10.
[19] W. H. Oliver, ‘The Awakening Imagination, 1940 – 1980’ in Geoffrey W. Rice (ed.), The Oxford History of New Zealand, 2nd ed. Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1992, p. 568.
[20] Karl Hils, Crafts for All, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1960.
