Page 45 - Constructing Craft

In contrast to Elizabeth Lissaman, Olive Jones and Briar Gardner, Robert Field

was English born and trained at the Royal College of Art in London from 1919 to
1924. He specialised in figure work in painting and sculpture working alongside

Barbara Hepworth and Henry Moore. Unable to find work, he emigrated to New

Zealand in 1925 to take up a teaching position at the Dunedin School of Art. In 1933
– 34, while on leave in England, he attended the Camberwell School where Olive

Jones was also studying. He ‘returned to Dunedin in 1935 “mad” on studio
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pottery’. In a small country like New Zealand people like Field and his wife Marion,
with their overseas art experience were respected for their opinions. Both were
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critical of the imported industrial ‘Art Pottery’ they saw in shops. Such criticism
boosted the confidence of early studio craftspeople. In 1938 W. H. Allen rather

prophetically noted that:
Pottery, one of the oldest of the arts, is not practised a great
deal by Dominion artists at present, but it is quite within the
bounds of possibility that Mr. Field, with his great enthusiasm
for the craft, and with sufficient interest on the part of the public,
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will succeed in establishing a New Zealand school for potters.

After the war Field moved to Auckland and became the head of the Art Department
at Avondale College where he set up the first ceramic training centre in New

Zealand. His students included leading figures in the post-war craft movement such
as Barry Brickell, Len Castle, Patricia Perrin and Peter Stichbury. They also learned

from Olive Jones and were aware of the work of Briar Gardner.

Robert N. Field, (1879 – 1987) in his more familiar role as a
painter, circa1932. Photo: A. K. C. Petersen.

Constructing Craft