Page 249 - Constructing Craft

because they did not follow the rigid prescription as set down by the recognised

leader of pottery taste in New Zealand in the post-war period – Bernard Leach in his
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book, A Potter’s Book. The claim that men were the first ‘professional’ potters has
also been disputed. The inter-war women potters, Briar Gardner, Elizabeth
Lissaman and Olive Jones, who are all mentioned in Chapter Two, earned their

living as potters and were all ‘professional’ potters.

Local to National

Women were vital to the development of the studio craft movement in New Zealand
and they often, in terms of numbers, dominated the committees of the national craft

organisations. Craft groups formed for a variety of reasons other than the

opportunity to learn the skills of the particular craft. Amongst these reasons were
companionship, the desire to give expression to creative ideas and the opportunity

to meet likeminded people. In 1958, Helen Mason noted in the introduction to the
first issue of the New Zealand Potter magazine that she had heard a woman at a

pottery workshop say, “It’s so nice being with you all – you’re as batty as I am. At
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home I’m the odd man out”. Mason was trying to show that for some women craft
groups offered a place where they were not expected to conform to their traditional

roles as wives, mothers and housekeepers. In Auckland, Dorothea Turner invited
fellow spinners to her home in Green Bay in the 1950s to spin and socialise. Some

from this circle of friends became members of the Handweavers Guild formed in

1953 and Turner helped establish the Wellington Weavers’ Guild in 1963. Both
Mason and Turner became influential within the respective national organisations

that formed around their crafts – Mason, the New Zealand Society of Potters
(NZSP) and Turner, the New Zealand Spinning, Weaving and Woolcraft Society

(NZSWWS).

Until the 1970s women’s administration of the numerous craft groups that

proliferated across the country was critical to the growth of the movement. Women
also frequently supported male partners in those crafts where men, as the

professionals, were the dominant practitioners. These ‘backroom’ roles did not
enhance their position within the craft world where attention was generally focussed

on the ‘leading’ practitioners. When national organisations became larger and more

Constructing Craft