Worldwide exhibitor's work in Quartz exhibition

An array of the work of Graeme Storm. Photos / Paul Brooks

A comprehensive array of the work of New Zealand potter Graeme Storm is on display at Quartz Museum of Studio Ceramics in Bates St.

Graeme Storm was born in Auckland in 1936 and he first experienced the wonders of clay in 1955 as a student at Auckland Teachers' College. He then trained at Dunedin Teachers' College as an Arts and Crafts Adviser for the Education Dept.
He travelled extensively, including to the UK where he attended the Central School of Arts and Crafts in London where he worked with Kenneth Clarke and Gwyn Hanssen and met many potters of renown.

He visited his father's homeland, Finland, where he visited the Arabia factory in Helsinki where he experienced the blue, green and purple high fired glazes achived from copper carbonate. Some of the work in the Quartz exhibitions bears those distinctive colours, and others.

"It's a barium blue with cobalt, to some extent, and there are other oxides that can be used which gives you the pinkie, turquoisie sort of colours as well," says Rick Rudd of Quartz. "But they're his signature colours, in a way.

"There's a lightness and elegance to it."

Work in the colours that defined much of Graeme Storm's work.

The works range in size from very small to large in differing styles of finish, including some vessels with carved surfaces in the Bellarmine tradition.

"Graeme has been influenced by certain ethnic traditions, but he's taken them and moved them on."

Rick knew Graeme had made some Bellarmine and was able to acquire some for the Quartz collection and the exhibition. "The Bellarmines were all salt glazed and I knew I should have one, but let's have one that he's moved on and changed."

There are other pieces in a shape recognised as Chinese, but in colours the Chinese didn't use.

"Graeme Storm, with Len Castle and Peter Stitchbury, they were the three big Auckland potters."

The exhibition is a good overview of Graeme's work.

Graeme Storm's work covers a range of styles.

In 1964, three years after returning to New Zealand, Graeme became a full-time potter. He married his wife Jacquie in 1965.

He has exhibited in Japan, China, England, Canada and Italy and his work was included in an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London in 1972. He is represented in the collections of Queen Elizabeth II and Emperor Akahito of Japan.

Graeme stopped making pots in 2016 and he and his wife Jacquie live in retirement in Torbay, Auckland.