Potter Dame Doreen Blumhardt dies

Dame Doreen pictured in 2006. Photo / Wairarapa Times-Age

Dame Doreen Blumhardt, one of New Zealand's most distinguished potters, has died, aged 95.

Dame Doreen, who worked as a ceramicist and arts educator for 70 years, died at her Wellington home on Saturday.

She was made a Member of the Order of New Zealand in 2006, the highest honour available to living New Zealanders.

She became a dame in August after the title was reinstated.

Dame Doreen was awarded an honorary doctorate from Victoria University in 1991, and also received the Governor-General's Art Award, as well as being awarded a fellowship of the New Zealand Academy of Fine Arts.

In 2002, she gifted her valuable art collection to NewDouse Museum in Lower Hutt, and in 2004 she set up the Blumhardt Foundation to foster, collect and display the best examples of applied arts and design arts in New Zealand.

Dame Doreen said in an earlier interview she discovered her passion for ceramic art while travelling the country as one of New Zealand's first itinerant art teachers.

"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."

Blumhardt Foundation chairman Dennis McKinlay said Dame Doreen was an enormously dedicated potter - it had been the great love of her life.

"But alongside that, and almost equally important, I believe, is her love of education, particularly around the arts," he told NZPA in 2006.

A funeral service will be held at Old St Paul's in Wellington on Thursday.

- NZPA