Kamaka pottery

Our current issue includes a feature on vases, and while we like everything stylist Trudie Kroef sourced for the shoot (the photographs were taken by Toaki Okano), a particular favourite is the vase in the centre of this image, designed by the late Estelle Martin of Hawke's Bay's Kamaka pottery (the vase on the left is by Jonathan Adler from Askew, while the yellow bowl at right is by Campbell Hegan from Masterworks).

Estelle and her husband Bruce travelled frequently to Japan in the 1970s, where they learned the art of wood-fired anagama pottery. Their work has won many national awards and featured in major exhibitions. Bruce still lives in the couple's Hawke's Bay home (designed by John Scott), where he sells works of his own and Estelle's, and writes this blog. We featured Bruce and Estelle's West Coast bach (also by John Scott) in the magazine's December/January 2010 issue, and on our blog at this link here. If you're in Hawke's Bay, Bruce's studio is a very special place to visit.

Design Awards 2010

Congratulations to Jamie McLellan, the winner of our annual Design Awards for the second year running. Jamie's 'Flyover' table was originally commissioned for the New Zealand Room at last years Venice art biennale, and is now available through Simon James Design's 'Resident' label.

The table was made using powder-coated steel that flat-packs for each shipping. Our design awards judges, designer Humphrey Ikin and art dealer Michael Lett, praised its sleek form, elegant construction, bold colour, and its applicability to both commercial and domestic settings.

The artist is in

Our new series of stories inside artists' studios was the brainchild of photographer Patrick Reynolds, who was inspired by his artist brother John's new studio, designed by Auckland architect Malcolm Walker. The studio is in the back yard of John's Grey Lynn villa, a mono-pitch structure that tilts up to clerestory windows admitting cool southerly light. Some of the shots below feature in our current issue of the magazine.

At the other end of the studio from the view above is the large window shown in the shots below, with its Mondrian-inspired pane of blue glass and a view out to the nikau palms John planted when he first purchased the villa about 20 years ago.

It looks like a big space in these photographs, but John has quickly filled it, and since begun panicking just a little about how to stop his habit for accumulating things from taking over what was briefly a rather pristine space. The views of the studio below show the polycarbonate wall that admits more light into the space.

And here's the artist, toiling in his studio. John says he does some of his best work in there at nights, when he relishes the convenience of being able to slip into the studio after dinner and not have to leave the family as he did when he would traipse back to his old studio in downtown Auckland. He's also excited about the possibilities a custom-built studio (and its large door, which can admit much more than the small canvases John has been working on recently) can open up for his art. "I think it will take years to full extract the value, to try things that I haven't because I haven't had the right kind of space," he says.

We'll feature more images from the studio series in upcoming posts. Not all of them will be architectural marvels like John's studio, but we don't mind that, as we're most interested in the way artists occupy and work in their spaces. Feel free to let us know which artist's spaces you'd like us to look into, and we can check them out.