Author(s): Baye Riddell

Ceramics | Aotearoa | Maori | 2024 Ockham New Zealand Book Awards long lists

This book is the first comprehensive overview of Māori claywork - its origins, its loss and its revival. Richly illustrated, it introduces readers to the practices of the five founders of Ngā Kaihanga Uku (the national clayworkers' collective) and surveys the work of the next generation.

The rise of an impressive ceramics movement is one of the more striking developments in contemporary Maori art. Clayworking and pottery firing was an ancient Pacific practice, but the knowledge had largely been lost by the ancestors of Maori before they arrived in Aotearoa. After the national clayworkers' collective, Nga Kaihanga Uku, was established in 1987, traditional ancestral knowledge and customs and connections with indigenous cultures with unbroken ceramic traditions helped shape a contemporary Maori expression in clay. This book is the first comprehensive overview of Maori claywork, its origins, loss and revival. Richly illustrated, it introduces readers to the practices of the five founders of Nga Kaihanga Uku and also surveys the work of the next generation.

Author Biography: Baye Pewhairangi Riddell (Ngati Porou and Te Whanau-a-Ruataupare) became a full-time potter in 1974, the first Maori artist to commit to this profession. In 1986, with Manos Nathan, he was a co-founder of Nga Kaihanga Uku, the national Maori clayworkers' collective. In 1989 he and Nathan were awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to establish an exchange with Native American artists. He was awarded the Creative New Zealand Craft/Object Fellowship in 2011.