Dame Doreen Blumhardt
"Doreen Blumhardt has become New Zealand's most distinguished potter but hardly less important is the part she, and the people she trained in schools and training college, played in creating a market for crafts in a generation of men and women who, in childhood and youth, had known the excitement of creating, however humbly, something in wood or clay with their own hands."
Dr Clarence Beeby, 1992, from "The Biography of an Idea"
"My work as a potter of over 50 years has always been influenced by my environment - the wonderful red streaks in the sky at sunrise over the harbour, the intense blues of the hills behind, the patterns in rock pools, the rocks themselves, and the shapes of nature's growth."
Dame Doreen Blumhardt, 1997
Dame Doreen Blumhardt ONZ, DCNZM, CBE (1914 - 2009) quietly passed away on Saturday 17 October at the age of 95. A passionate ceramist and arts educator for close to 70 years, Doreen continued to work daily in her studio well into her 90s and inspired countless others with her passion for making and her boundless pursuit of knowledge.
Art making and education were inseparable throughout her life. She attended art school and teachers' college in Christchurch in the 1930s, and in 1942 the revolutionary Director of Education, Dr Clarence Beeby, employed her to develop art and craft activities for a national programme. Dr Beeby believed that "putting tools for creativity into children's hands would have a long-term effect on the adult community" and it was Doreen who began this developmental work at Waterloo School in Lower Hutt. As Head of the Arts Department at the Wellington College of Education from 1951 to 1972, she continued to implement Dr Beeby's vision.
From the 1940s, Doreen played an instrumental role in New Zealand's pottery movement. There is a delightful story of Doreen coming across the then fledgling potter Len Castle, in the bowels of Auckland Teachers College, struggling to centre one of his first blocks of clay and Doreen, seeing his difficulty, stepping in to show him how to do it. She was one of the 15 potters invited to show in the first national pottery exhibition in 1957 organised by O.C. Stephens, and in 1958 she founded the New Zealand Potter magazine with Helen Mason and Terry Barrow.
An avid traveller, Doreen frequently returned from her trips with boxes of ceramics from as far as Japan, Petra and Mexico to share with other enthusiasts. She encouraged celebrated international potters, such as Bernard Leach from England and Takeichi Kawai and Shoji Hamada from Japan, to present workshops in New Zealand. She created, in conjunction with celebrated photographer Brian Brake, two of the most important ceramics/crafts reference books in New Zealand - "New Zealand Potters Their Words and Works" (1976) and "Craft New Zealand The Art of the Craftsman" (1981).
In a life crowded with achievement, Doreen's role in the New Zealand applied arts community is perhaps most exemplified by the personal relationships she made and the inspiration and mentoring she provided to so many over such a long period of time. Her unquenchable enthusiasm, her love for people of all ages, and her deep appreciation of beauty in nature and art, and all that she accomplished, were underpinned by her deeply held spiritual faith.
Throughout her career Doreen exhibited widely both nationally and internationally. Her work is held in several international collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, and Museo Caccia, Switzerland. TheNewDowse hosted the first solo exhibition of Doreen's work in 1976. She was made a member of New Zealand's highest honour, the Order of New Zealand, in the New Year's Honours in 2007. And it was in 2003 that Doreen laid the ground work for her enduring legacy to New Zealand applied art making and education with the establishment of The Blumhardt Foundation.