Works that are part of the New Zealand historical collection.
About 4000 ceramic works are housed at New Zealand’s only museum of studio ceramics, Quartz, in Whanganui - operated by studio potter Rick Rudd.
Rudd sold his “house on the cliff” in Whanganui to buy the Quartz building in 2014 and set up the Rick Rudd Foundation, a charitable trust.
Quartz opened in November 2015 and is now well-established as a museum. “People come from all over New Zealand, especially potters, to see it,” says Rudd. “Some visitors say ‘I’ve been told to come here’.”
He has been a potter for 55 years, and is still working on pots, every day. “I have to be here as curator and director, six days a week. I have earned my living from pots since 1975,” he said.
Rudd was born in Great Yarmouth, England, and spent four years at art colleges - three while studying ceramics, resulting in a Diploma in Art and Design, Ceramics, in 1972.
“I still talk to my ceramics tutor, who is 93 years old, in England, Barbara Balls. I have told her how important she was to me as a tutor,” he said.
Rudd came to New Zealand in 1973, living in Kamo near Whangārei for a couple of years, before moving to Auckland. He won the Fletcher Brownbuilt Award in 1978. “It gave me a lot of profile,” he said. He became president of Auckland Studio Potters for three years.
He won the Winstones Bowl Award (1981), the New Zealand Academy of Fine Art, the Caltex Oil Award (1983), the Norsewear Art Award for Pottery (1995), and the Ballentynes Contemporary Tableware Award (2001).
He has exhibited widely throughout New Zealand, regularly in solo exhibitions, and numerous times as a guest exhibitor, and his work has been included in international exhibitions in Italy, Australia, Canada, the United States, Singapore, Japan, Finland, Hong Kong, Guernsey, and Taiwan.
His work is held in many of the museum and art gallery collections in New Zealand, including the Museum of New Zealand, Te Papa Tongarewa. It is represented in several books, including Craft New Zealand, Studio Ceramics, Ceramic Form, Contemporary Ceramic Art in Australia and New Zealand, 100 New Zealand Craft Artists, 500 Teapots, 500 Bowls, The Best of 500 Ceramics, and often in The New Zealand Potter magazine.
He has curated and selected national exhibitions and has conducted workshops for many potters’ groups and polytechnics around New Zealand.
In 1985 he moved to Whanganui, after taking a workshop and as a guest exhibitor for the local Potters’ Society. “I thought this was a nice place. House prices were cheap, so I sold up in Auckland and moved to Whanganui,” he said.
In 1989-1991 he was president of the New Zealand Society of Potters and was made a life member in 2016. He was a participant in the first New Zealand Ceramics Symposium (1988) and received Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council grants in 1984 and 1992.
He was a member of the Trust Board of the Sarjeant Gallery, Whanganui (1991-1997), and a member of the New Zealand Ceramic Heritage Trust (2013-2016).
In 2020, he was made a Member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in the Queen’s Birthday Honours list.
“I have put together a collection in one room in order to show the development of studio pottery in New Zealand and its history. That room was where the whole concept of the museum was established,” he said.
Rudd’s pots are hand-built, not made on a potter’s wheel.
“It’s about engineering the work so it holds up, working on it and improving the form,” he said. “It takes me about three days to make a pot.”