Creative streak benefited thousands

Blumhardt's creative works are included in collections here and overseas. Photo / Wairarapa Times-Age

Dame Doreen Blumhardt, potter, art education pioneer. Died aged 95

When Dr (Vera) Doreen Blumhardt gained New Zealand's highest honour of the Order of New Zealand in 2006 she had been making pots for 70 years.

And she had risen from being a significant pioneer of art education in primary schools to what a NZ Listener article in 1983 described as a "national figure - an educator, writer and traveller".

In recent years she was founder of the Blumhardt Foundation set up to foster art in New Zealand.

Working for many years as a full-time artist saw her creative works included in public and private collections overseas and in New Zealand.

In addition to pots, her work has encompassed ceramics and sculptures and fountains in private gardens, decorative wall panels and even an 8m by 2m ceramic wall in 1983.

Her studio on a high hill in Wellington looking across the harbour became a mecca for art lovers and guests. But although she lived for many years in the capital, her origins were in Northland.

Blumhardt was born in Whangarei and educated at Whangarei High School, and early on helped on the family backblocks farm.

Elva Bett in the Listener described the family name as German. Her grandfather arrived in New Zealand in 1895.

Before full-time pottery, she followed a career as a teacher and lecturer - but not without a struggle. In the depression of the 1930s there was no intake of students for teachers' college.

She marked time in Christchurch, extending her full-time and part-time years at the Canterbury University School of Fine Arts to seven before she could enter teachers college. She also taught German (being bilingual) and the violin to eke out a living.

Her father had taught her the violin from 10 and also encouraged her in drawing and botany.

An important breakthrough arrived in 1942 when the then director of education assigned her the task of organising art and education in primary schools.

The brief was apparently that a good craft should be able to be developed, with a progressive increase in skill and taste. And that it should be constructive rather than merely decorative and include the use of New Zealand materials.

Blumhardt included these principles in her teaching and they are said to have been reflected in her ceramics.

In 1951 she became head of the art department at Wellington Teachers College and it is calculated that thousands of craftspeople owe a debt to the system she organised and in which she believed.

She retired from the college in 1971. In 1981 architect Ian Athfield commissioned from her an 8m by 2m ceramic wall placed behind the newly erected Christian Science church in Willis St in Wellington.

It involved 400 20cm by 20cm ceramic tiles.

Blumhardt was also a writer of note. With Helen Mason she co-founded the New Zealand Potter in 1958. In 1976 she wrote New Zealand Potters - their Work and Words in collaboration with photographer Brian Brake. In 1981 they also won a Wattie Book of the Year Award for Craft New Zealand - The Art of the Craftsman.

Dame Doreen Blumhardt ONZ, DNZM (Order of Merit), CBE, received her title of Dame only in August.

She was described this week by Prime Minister John Key as being well-deserving of the honour which "capped off a lifetime passion for the arts that saw her internationally recognised".

She is survived by two sisters.