Finding a new home for studio of potter Helen Mason

Helen Mason House is on the move from the Waiohiki Creative Arts Village.

Late New Zealand pottery matriarch Helen Mason, who died at the age of 99 in 2014, established studios wherever she settled, including in Hawke’s Bay.

But, even in death she is on the move again, or at least her home, “Helen Mason House”, is.

The cyclone-ravaged building has been trucked from the Waiohiki Creative Arts Village near Taradale to her old stomping grounds in Central Hawke’s Bay where it will be a new creative project of its own.

Born in 1915, Mason grew-up in Wellington, became a full-time potter in the 1960s, soon exhibiting internationally, and eventually she moved to the Waitākere Ranges, then Ōtāne, and in 1974 to Tokomaru Bay, where she was involved with establishing the Tauira Craft Centre with Ngoi Pēwhairangi.

In the 1990s she lived in a house truck based in Coromandel, and having been bestowed a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit (MNZM) in the 2005 New Year’s Honours, returned to Hawke’s Bay in 2006 and lived in the house at the Waiohiki village.

The late matriarch of New Zealand pottery, Helen Mason, pictured at a celebratory opening of a new wood-fired kiln at Waiohiki Creative Arts Village in 2007. Her work was among the 500 pieces that went into the first firing. She died in 2014, aged 99. Photo / NZME

With the village devastated in the flooding of the Tutaekuri River in Cyclone Gabrielle in February last year, the house became “technically a write-off”, says according to Waiohiki Community Trist chairman Laurie O’Reilly.

With insurers having honoured their cover, it has been gifted by the trust to a young craftsman to repair and restore the dwelling.

“It didn’t make economic sense for us to repair the house,” O’Reilly says. “Technically it is a write-off, but our philosophy is to recycle what we can.”

The trust is a registered community housing provider which he says is committed to rebuilding and providing good quality housing at an affordable rent, with security of tenure, at Waiohiki.

Doug Laing is a senior reporter based in Napier with Hawke’s Bay Today, and has 50 years of journalism experience in news gathering, including breaking news, sports, local events, issues, and personalities.