The Journal of Australian Ceramics Vol 52 No 1 April 2013
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Focus: New Zealand <strong>Ceramics</strong><br />
Barry Brickel l, 2012<br />
Photo: LUCille <strong>No</strong>bleza<br />
Driving Creek Potteries<br />
Barry Brickell's story<br />
Born in 1935 in New Plymouth, New Zealand, a third generation 'Kiwi', the eldest <strong>of</strong> four siblings, lefthanded<br />
and 'arty' and thus a puule to my father, I came into ceramics during my early teenage years,<br />
not through art or craft but via fire, furnaces and steam engines at the nearby coal-fired gasworks and<br />
associated firebrick works in Devonport, Auckland where our family lived _ Fascinated, watching the<br />
sweating fireman stoking raw coke into his round <strong>of</strong> ten fireboxes to achieve 1300°C in the huge kiln, I<br />
built my first serious kiln with waste firebricks to fire miniature bricks_<br />
Later, after meeting potter Len Castle, eleven years my senior, I became ecstatic about making pots<br />
after watching him throw so effortlessly to make big bowls, wine jars and strappy-handled jugs_ I<br />
persuaded my father to make me a crude potter's wheel. Len was having his pots fired in an industrial<br />
coal-fired salt-glaze kiln, clandestinely I believe, but to me the results were so beautiful that I had to salt<br />
my coke-fired kiln which, by now, had pots in it instead <strong>of</strong> mini-bricks_ I regarded Len as my mentor in<br />
studio pottery, but many years later our paths diverged; while he went into more sophistication in terms<br />
THE JOURNAL OF AUSTRALIAN CERAMICS APRIL 201) S9
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