Simon Manchester. Those are Rick Rudd pots in the background.
PICTURE / RICK RUDD
Simon Manchester. Those are Rick Rudd pots in the background.
PICTURE / RICK RUDD
Rick Rudd's Quartz Museum of Studio Ceramics has a number of items from the New Zealand-famous Simon Manchester collection, a vast body of work documenting the best of New Zealand potters. Simon and Rick were friends, and recently Rick spoke at a service to celebrate the life of the Wellington businessmanand collector. Simon died last month. He left his enormous ceramics collection to the Rick Rudd Foundation.
"It's a daunting, exciting upheaval in a way, but it does make this place [Quartz] even more of a national collection," says Rick. "My hope is that through permanent and temporary exhibitions at Quartz Museum of Studio Ceramics in Whanganui and lending to other institutions as Simon has done so often in the past, the collection will quietly educate and be enjoyed by as many people as possible," Rick said in his address at Simon's service.
"The important thing is to do the best with it," he says. "That's want he wanted." Although Simon gave Rick permission to sell some items, Rick says that's not going to happen. "As far as I'm concerned, it is one thing: It is the Simon Manchester Ceramics Collection. It is finite. It can't be added to, it can't be subtracted from."
"The breadth of his ceramic collection was extensive, from the pioneer potters of the early and mid-20th century, to the Anglo-Oriental influenced potters of the 60s and 70s, to the newer potters of the 80s onwards, and to the most important potters of today," Rick said in his address.
Simon had been a collector of ceramics since the 1980s and had a vast knowledge of everything in which he took an interest. Somehow, space will be made at Quartz for Simon Manchester's legacy.
