This piece of pottery gives me that pleasant, slightly giddy feeling I get when I look down at my feet at the beach and see a shallow tide wash over wind blown sand ripples. Ahh.
It's maker, wild-west-coast potter Chris Weaver has a show at Form Gallery, Christchurch right now. If you can get yourself there I can promise you'll be over taken by all kinds of pleasant feelings, lust likely the primary one (they are very affordable in the way that craft is and art isn't). Or you could just find one of his quiet, evocative pieces of tablewear, in this case a leaf bowl ($3) down the op-shop if you are my very observant husband. Or two, since he also found an antique iron inspired sugar bowl last year!
I'm not surprised at all at the lack of appreciation of his genius that has meant these have been donated to an op-shop, I see all kinds of wonderful how-could-you-ever-part-with-it things in those places, I am just simply, joyfully, jump-up-and-down grateful.
I don't use the word genius lightly. I have a piece of his celadon pottery, a salt cellar, from the 2006 Canterbury Potters Exhibition where he was guest potter, which I can say unequivocally is the most sublime piece of pottery I have ever beheld. I know it's irritating for me to say that and not show you a photograph (it's behind perspex to protect it from earthquakes, kids and cats, which makes it difficult to photograph-and makes me a hypocrite!) but also because like any truly great piece of pottery it is the feel of the thing in your hands (or even the feel of it in use) which is the biggest part of it's joy.
This does not have a makers mark, but if you like to pick up pottery at op-shops there is a great resource on the New Zealand potters website which can assist you to identify NZ pottery with a makers mark.
p.s Chris Weaver also makes his own pottery tools, from native timber driftwood and other beach gleanings. See, told you. Genius.
Driftwood Pottery Tools
