Briar Gardner (New Zealand) ceramics

Maria Louisa "Briar" Gardner was a New Zealand potter and speech therapist born in Hobsonville, Auckland in July 1879. Her family had a connection to the pottery industry, and with her guidance, her brothers established the Crown Lynn pottery.

Gardner showed interest in creative arts and studied embroidery, tapestry, and painting in Australia, exhibiting her decorative needlework in Auckland in 1920. She later attended Elam School of Fine Arts, where she learned sculpture and M?ori design. Gardner became interested in pottery when English potter William Speer started working at New Lynn, and her skill and recognition developed in the 1930s.

She regularly exhibited her pottery through the Auckland Society of Arts and exhibited alongside four other women artists at the Waikato Society of Arts in 1937. In the same year, she established a kiln and pottery studio at her family home, and during the war years, her work was more... sold throughout New Zealand, with some exports to Australia. Gardner was praised for her use of soft colorings, flowing glazes, and Maori and indigenous plant motifs in the mid-1930s.

She had to cease making pottery in 1950 due to arthritis and trained as a speech and drama teacher in 1951. Gardner passed away in Auckland in 1968, and her work is now held in the collections of the Auckland War Memorial Museum and Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa. less...