Tea and coffee sets

Press, 27 November 1986, Page 20

Tea and coffee sets

An exhibition of tea, coffee, and tumbler sets by invited potters from throughout New Zealand, at the Courtyard Pottery, until December 4. Reviewed by Barry Allom.

With the recent dominance of decorative and sculptural work in New Zealand pottery, domestic pots have become less visible in our galleries. It is refreshing to come across an exhibition devoted entirely to domestic ware and containing pieces from some of our popular and most innovative potters. Potters from as far north as Te Kao and as far south as Ashburton are represented.

Chester Nealie is one of our long-established and strongest potters. The small pieces here could never be called utilitarian. Even his simplest and most domestic pots have vigour and idiosyncratic quality that raise them above the ordinary. His delightful wood-fired pieces — a tiny teapot (No. 9), a small lidded jar (No. 10), and a small beaker (No. 11) — stand out in this exhibition. Peter Gibbs’s small blue faceted 3-piece tea set is simple, practical, well balanced and appealing. A

similar set by Jan Cockell, of Auckland, is pretty, with its swirled design in blue and white porcelain but the scale is not quite right. lan Firth’s coffee set is well made and practical with its comfortable handles and spontaneous, rich deep glossy glaze. David McMillan has the well crafted tea set pieces we have come to expect of him. There are traditional blue tea sets by Cynthia Goff as well as the stylised patterns and clean-cut designs of Auckland’s Sally Vinson.

A local potter, Margaret Ryley, has a set of simple, effective, cylindrical coffee mugs with a large jug. There are six gracefully simple, curved tumblers by Frederika Ernsten and the red-brown spotted porcelain coffee set by Flora Christeller, of Silverstream, has a lot of visual appeal. The small traditional coffee cups and saucers have a nice proportion and scale that make you want to use them.

Greg Barron’s rather graceless and ungainly porcelain coffee set sits heavily on its shelf. By contracts the large 10piece set by Ross Richards, although it shows

little of his recent flair, is lifted above the ordinary by the tea and coffee pots with their decorative and whimsical spouts. John Crawford is another South Island potter who has made an impact on the recent national scene with his ceramic sculptures and bright colours. Here he has an interesting boulder-like bluish teapot with cutely corked orifices and a swirl of a handle.

After the daring and innovative forms seen in recent exhibitions, this collection of the practical brings us down to earth and reminds us that domestic pottery is the stuff of our ceramic culture. It underpins the changes and experimentation which we hope will continue to flourish in contemporary New Zealand ceramics. There will always be a place for domestic ware as long as tea, coffee, and juice are drunk.

Though there is a hint here that a new sense of style is beginning to influence our domestic pottery, this is a safe exhibition with little of the flair we have now come to expect of our potters.