MY MUSE - JOHN PARKER

I have always travelled a different road from other New Zealand studio potters. Abandoning the acceptable truth to materials philosophy of the Anglo-Japanese, Leach/Hamada tradition, my mentors were European ceramicists Lucie Rie and Hans Coper. Lucie was a great inspiration and friend while I was in London (1973-77) and Hans was my tutor while studying for my MA at the Royal College of Art (1974-5). With influence from design movements like De Stihl and the Bauhaus I aligned myself with a modernist/industrial direction.

I had started collecting Hand-Potted Crown Lynn before 1973, mostly as a reaction against the negativity towards industrially made ware by the Truth to Materialists. But I related to the work of Earnest Shufflebotham (1908-1984) throwing and turning at Crown Lynn active in the 1930s-40s. This is how I worked as well. I felt I had found a kindred spirit. I responded to the style and design which showed no hint of being handmade, but which could not have been made any other way.To me the greatest compliment is if someone thinks my work is made of plastic or glass.

In turn I discovered Earnest was a protege of NZ architect and designer Keith Murray (1892-1981) who designed for Wedgwood in Britain from 1932. But Murray had been influenced by the work of Swedish potter and designer Ewald Dahlskog (1894-1950), that he had seen at the 1931 Exhibition of Swedish Industrial Art in London. Dahlskog's work was described as "grooved vessels referencing ceramic industrial insulators." His work is so simple and modern it takes my breath away with its timelessness......

I have collections of insulators and the industrial ceramics of Shufflebotham and Murray (sadly none by Dahlskog) and they all continually inform my practice as a kind of 3D visual sketchbook, giving me something to always aspire up to.

I feel definitely embedded in the continuum of New Zealand modernist/industrial studio pottery history.

I continue to revisit ideas and introduce new textures but most of my work is known through white which has often been juxtaposed with black, grey, gold and primary colours. I also play textures off against smooth matt and shiny surfaces.

And with this collaborative exhibition with Kaye, we are each other's muse, playing the chemical reactions of volcanic, craquelle and many other surfaces off against different shades of black and grey in different fabric media.

JOHN PARKER