John Parker has always travelled a different road from other New Zealand studio potters.
Most learned their craft by working with a senior practitioner such as Barry Brickell or Yvonne Rust and poring over Bernard Leach's A Potter's Handbook.
However, Parker took the academic route and studied at the Royal College of Art under Continental ceramicists Hans Coper and Lucie Rie, thereby aligning himself with a modernist/industrial direction alternative to the Anglo-Japanese, Leach/Hamada tradition followed by most locals, including Len Castle and Chester Nealie.
Back home with his London MA in ceramics, in 1977 Parker sought out sympathetic antecedents in the expatriate Kiwi and Wedgwood designer Keith Murray and his one-time assistant Ernie Shufflebotham of "Crown Lynn Hand Potted" fame. This lineage is acknowledged in a group of pristine white porcelain grooved pieces, Still Life for Keith and Ernie and Ewald - the last named being Swedish potter and designer Ewald Dahlskog (1894-1950), especially noted for his grooved vessels.
This handsome, landscape-format hardback fully documents the survey exhibition of Parker's work of the same title at Te Uru Waitakere Contemporary Gallery, which ends tomorrow. It superbly encompasses 50 years of dedicated practice - the earliest pieces date from 1972-73 - and, thanks to brilliant design (by Derek Ward) and photography (by Haru Sameshima), has a permanent record in one of the finest books on ceramics produced in this country.
