Taonga: Fiona Oliver on her love of ceramics

Fiona Oliver with her collection of ceramic ware at her home in Wellington. Photo / Marty Melville

My ceramic collection at home is huge. I haven't ever counted them all – that would take a long time – but there are certainly hundreds. I keep most of them in two big dressers in my kitchen – one is a lovely Victorian dresser. Plates and bowls are stacked. Over there you can see bowls in one place, little cups and dishes in another place and vases at the top. I have some plates attached to the wall so you can "see inside" them in a sense, like an open book. There are also stacks of ceramics in places throughout the house.

I grew up in Lower Hutt. My nana and grandad were potters. I was never really allowed in their workshop because they didn't want kids breaking things but I've always been quite interested in ceramics. I recently joined the Wellington Potters' Association, did a course and have had a little workshop in my shed for about a year. So I'm very "beginnerish".

As a collector, I started about 15 years ago when my daughters were little and I needed to get out of the house. We'd go to the op shops once a week and I started noticing what amazing ceramics you could pick up. So I got the bug.

I've picked up some ceramics through op-shopping, markets and fairs. I've lived and travelled overseas, so picked up some on my trips. I don't buy any online because you don't get that "tactility" or that excitement of seeing something you like in one moment and taking it away.

Initially I worried the kids would break something – so their bowls were on a level in a cupboard that they could just reach. I don't need to worry about it now – Mathilde is 15 and Leonor 14. We don't use the same bowls or plates for meals, because I'm an absolute believer that things need to be used, not just displayed.

Of course, every time there's an earthquake my heart is in my mouth. If there was a fire and I could only save one piece, it would be the Mexican tree of life – a really old ceramic work, kept in my bedroom. Its symbolism is based on the Garden of Eden and there are lizards, birds and other animals in the branches. And because it's from Mexico, instead of a little God at the top, there's the Virgin Mary. I got that at the Day of the Dead festival in Mexico. This was a hard piece to get home. It's really impractical trying to bring ceramics on a plane. But nothing has ever broken, because I nurse it in my hand luggage.

I like that my ceramics have been handled or used by someone. I look for stories behind things. For our exhibition, Mīharo Wonder, we chose items that tell the stories of everyday people and details of their lives. The exhibition has three clay tablets – just a few centimetres square – dating from 2250BC in Mesopotamia, modern-day Iraq. They were made of clay on riverbanks, inscribed with a reed and dried in the sun; the inscriptions are Sumerian cuneiform, the earliest-known writing system.

The tablets give us rich detail about what everyday life was like 4000 years ago. One inscription concerns the charge for hiring a boat to carry reeds upstream from the ancient city of Umma. They're all so evocative because someone made them, held them, used them – and that's what I like about my ceramics.

Nothing in my collection has high monetary value but it depends on how you define precious. The pieces I like most are associated with a memory – a trip, or a gift from someone, a time in your life. In that sense they are personal taonga.

- As told to Sarah Lang

* For 10 years Fiona Oliver was Curator, NZ and Pacific Publications at the Alexander Turnbull Library (part of the National Library) and since March has been a National Library Exhibition Advisor. She has co-curated centenary exhibition Mīharo Wonder: 100 Years of the Alexander Turnbull Library, running until early October. The 170 items include Boethius, De musica: a medieval treatise on music with intricate illustrations and Latin text. A lover of ceramics, Oliver lives in Berhampore, Wellington.