The Greatest Show: Warren Tippett’s pots from a life less ordinary

The Greatest Show: Warren Tippett’s pots from a life less ordinary

Moyra Elliott and an essay by Peter Wells. With photographs by Marti Friedlander and Studio La Gonda

Revised and expanded second edition.

Biography and works of potter – Warren Tippett (b.1941–d.1994).

Researched and written by Moyra Elliott – co-author of Cone Ten Down: Studio Pottery in New Zealand 1945-1980, (Bateman 2009). Warren Tippett was an agent of change in New Zealand ceramic practice. He was reared as a ‘mud and water man’ in the 1960s because of where the strengths lay in the clay culture of the time with its influences from an imported Anglo-oriental style. However, he jumped ship and some twenty years after he became a potter, after playing briefly and creatively with sculpture – returned to the vessel and made the surface decoration his primary concern. He investigated areas that hitherto had been of little interest in New Zealand pottery and in doing so, connected with long histories of decorated pottery from many cultures. He also took references from his surroundings in Grey Lynn introducing palm trees, cacti and floral motifs and responded to the fresh stimulation of his urban environment with its strong Polynesian elements – lei and lava-lava and the Tongan brass band along with the vibrant street life where the raffish and the gaudy juxtaposed the cool. His new vocabulary became something unique – an expression of a region, a poly-centrist, polygenetic place located somewhere on the western Pacific part of the map.

Through his work, Tippett helped reform the canon of ceramics in New Zealand. No artist works in isolation but he was critical for the acceptance of earthenware in contemporary ceramic practice. His legacy is that he legitimised electric firing at lower temperatures which overturned an entrenched blueprint on how to make and what to make. By embracing the aesthetics more associated with pop culture, Polynesia and carnival ware, he opened doors to a healthier diversity.   

The first edition of this book accompanied a retrospective exhibition of Warran Tippett’s work at Objectspace in Auckland 2005/6 curated by the author.  This 2nd expanded edition features a visual chronology of Warren Tippett’s works, as well as previously unpublished portraits of Tippett by the late Marti Friedlander, and revised photographs with better reproductions of key works. 

2021

ISBN 978-0-9951184-7-8

Limited to 100 copies

RRP $40, 44pp 210x260mm portrait with cover, saddle stitched.

Add to cart

For all wholesale orders and requests info@rimbooks.com

“Warren Tippett is a seminal figure in the history of New Zealand studio ceramics because his works and lifestyle connect up key moments and significant local and international studio ceramics dynamics. In the words of curator Moyra Elliott, “Tippett helped reform the canon of ceramics in New Zealand.” Tippet started potting in Invercargill in the late 1950s. By the 1970s, and living in Coromandel, he was recognized as an important second generation figure in the ranks of potters working within the Anglo-Oriental tradition. This school of thought derives from the writings of English potter Bernard Leach which drew inspiration from medieval English and traditional Japanese and Korean pots which emphasised material, a quiet decoration and the spontaneity of the firing process. The philosophy engendered a vocational, workshop centred, pottery making life. It was this approach that informed most New Zealand studio ceramics production of the time. Moyra Elliott has pinpointed the time around the 1978 exhibition at Auckland’s New Vision Gallery and the 1980 Five by Five show at the Denis Cohn Gallery as a pivotal time in Tippett’s practice which “condense shifts in New Zealand clay practice, which actually took more than a decade, into a little over a year. The shift revolves around notions of function and diversity…there was a repositioning beyond function and into the decorative.” Changes in Tippett’s lifestyle were reflected in his work. As his interest moved from form to surface his work embraced the colourful and vibrant influences of his own Auckland and Sydney environments, the traditions of decorated Oriental and Mediterranean ceramics and contemporary international developments that located ceramics as part of a wider dynamic visual culture. In making a series of innovations within his own practice he “overturned an entrenched blueprint on how to make pots and what kind of pots to make. By embracing the formerly scorned earthenware and aesthetics more associated with pop culture, Polynesia and carnival-ware he opened the doors to a healthier diversity””.

Biography of Warren Tippett – Sarjeant Art Gallery

Garden of Memories: Extending quilt making traditions from around the Pacific Rim
Giles Peterson with Shona Pitt, Sheena Tavairanga, Lisa Reihana, Vea Mafile’o, Reina Sutton, Lina Pavaha Marsh, and Ken Khun.

Garden of Memories, curated by Giles Peterson, brings together heirloom and contemporary Pacific quilts from Peterson’s collection and uses these precious objects as the starting point for exploring contemporary craft and object-making by extending this traditional form into creative interpretations and new works by artists from across Asia and the Pacific.

Six quilts from Aotearoa and the Pacific are at the centre of the exhibition and this complementing publication.  Peterson’s personal connection … Continue reading

Elizabeth Lissaman: New Zealand’s Pioneer Studio Potter 
Jane Vial and Steve Austin

With a foreword by Justine Olsen – Curator of Decorative Arts at Te Papa, and an afterword by Rick Rudd – potter and Director of the Quartz Museum.

Elizabeth Lissaman: New Zealand’s Pioneer Studio Potter traces the life and works of New Zealand’s pioneering woman studio potter. It is fully illustrated with over 100 images, especially photographed, of Lissaman’s pottery selected from private and public collections. Illustrations also include images of her designs and historical family photographs. The biography is meticulously researched and written by Jane … Continue reading

DESIGN GENERATION: How Peter Haythornthwaite shaped New Zealand’s design-led enterprise
Michael Smythe
With an introduction and interview by Michael Barrett

This book tells the story of one of New Zealand’s most influential industrial designers. Spanning five decades, Design Generation documents Haythornthwaite’s career through childhood influences, education in Auckland and Illinois, work experience in California and New York, and teaching and consultant practice back in New Zealand. It chronicles his many roles as a design leader: as innovator of design, employer in private practices and his notable contribution to the wider field of design.  Vivid case studies of Haythornthwaite’s work illustrate … Continue reading

COLONIAL GOOSE
Pauline Bern

The idea of making do with what’s available is a fitting analogy for Pauline Bern’s jewellery practice. Bern has always utilised locally sourced materials that are connected to her in some way and worked to transform them into something new. In this instance, a selection of plants from her Devonport garden provided the primary material for the pieces in Colonial Goose.

Colonial Goose harks back to the early pioneering tradition in New Zealand of making do with what’s on hand. Owing to a scarcity of geese, the traditional English Christmas fare of roast … Continue reading


METAPHYSICAL HEART
JEWELLERY BY PETER MCKAY
Damian Skinner

Published on the occasion of the exhibition Metaphysical heart : jewellery by Peter McKay.

A storytelling jeweller, working alone on Banks Peninsula, with one eye focused on the artistic heritage of Europe and the other trained on the mythic potential of his local landscape. Welcome to the work (and world) of Peter McKay, one of this country’s senior jewellers. From his early days as an apprentice of Kobi Bosshard, trained in the techniques and aesthetics of European goldsmithing, to the appropriation
of European modernism and Medieval and Renaissance art that marked … Continue reading

1839 EXCHANGES
JEWELLERY BY JASON HALL
curated by Damian Skinner

“An exhibition about jewellery, identity and cultural exchange explored through a series of amulets created for Frederick Edward Maning”

Since 1998 Jason Hall’s jewellery has been asking questions about Päkehä identity. His work represents a consistent struggle to negotiate being Päkehä through an awareness of the traditions and craft of contemporary jewellery in Aotearoa. 1839 Exchanges: Jewellery
by Jason Hall is an exhibition about jewellery, identity and cultural exchange explored through a series of amulets created for Frederick Edward Maning, an Irishman who arrived in Aotearoa in 1833 … Continue reading