His Own Steam: The Work of Barry Brickell

His Own Steam: The Work of Barry Brickell by David Craig; Gregory O'Brien.
RARE.

Publisher: Auckland University Press, 2013, First Edition.

Near new hardback with jacket, binding firm, no owner inscriptions.
Jacket has some light shelf-wear with minor marks, chipping to front flap fold.
218 pages, illustrated.

Potter extraordinaire, conservationist, railway enthusiast and iconoclast Barry Brickell is one of New Zealand’s most important ceramicists. His exuberant and elemental, warts-and-all pots and sculptures pulse with a humour and sexuality rare in New Zealand craft or art. From the 1950s, with his friend and mentor Len Castle, Brickell became a central figure in Auckland’s pottery scene, leading the development of a distinctive indigenous ceramic style. Alongside the early commissions he received for domestic pots, mugs and jugs from local artists and bohemians, he became well known for his unusual sculptural forms and his use of coarse local clays (notoriously stolen in night raids from various sites around Auckland) and salt glazes. And as his reputation as potter and kiln-master grew, so too did his homegrown narrow-gauge railway at Driving Creek in the Coromandel, which with its sculpted hillsides and human detritus, remains his largest and most powerful work. In essays by David Craig and Gregory O’Brien and with both newly commissioned photographs by Haru Sameshima and historic images, this book charts Brickell’s career in its entirety and in the context of his life and times.

ALL PHOTOS ARE OF THE ACTUAL BOOK. 

All books are sent with free courier postage within New Zealand.