KEY POINTS:
A top potter and art educator is one of two New Zealanders to join the most exclusive order in the New Year Honours.
Doreen Blumhardt, 92, who has worked as a ceramicist and arts educator for 70 years and headed the Wellington College of Education's art department for more than 20 years, has been created a Member of the Order of New Zealand, as has theologian Professor Lloyd Geering.
In 2002, Dr Blumhardt donated $1.5 million to the extension of the Lower Hutt Dowse Art Museum.
In 2004, she set up the Blumhardt Foundation to foster, collect and display the best applied arts and design arts in New Zealand.
On the Career Services website, Dr Blumhardt said she discovered her passion for ceramic art while travelling the country as an itinerant art teacher.
"It came to me through teaching. I taught all aspects of the arts and clay just appealed to me as something that had tremendous potential to create with," she said.
"It was a great vehicle for young children to explore with. It's malleable and it gives a feeling of power - they love it."
Dr Blumhardt became a potter in her spare time.
"All the time I was teaching I would run home each day to go in my workshop. I learned pottery through teaching. You have to keep one step ahead of the people you are teaching, but the students and I worked and learned together.
"I don't think I could have survived as an artist without my teaching; it can be difficult to survive on art work alone."
The Blumhardt Gallery will open at the Dowse in February and will show applied arts including ceramics, design, embroidery, furniture, jewellery, wood and metal work, and textiles.
The Blumhardt Foundation hopes to attract other patrons of the applied arts, and it will seek donations of works of decorative and applied arts and related archives.
It plans to build up a national collection of works, to be held primarily at the Dowse, but elsewhere as well, and wants to set up educational programmes for young artists and support mature artists with master classes.
Dr Blumhardt was awarded an honorary doctorate by Victoria University in 1991.
She also received the Governor-General's Art Award and was awarded a fellowship of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts.
She was made a Commander of the Order of the British Empire in 1981 and a Distinguished Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2003 for services to art and pottery.
- NZPA
* Clarification: Doreen Blumhardt, ONZ, has bequeathed a total of $1.5 million to the Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt, not her art collection and $1.5 million as stated in earlier reports.
