Steven Scholefield

Steven Scholefield was born in 1954. He began ceramic work in 1971, when he worked for three years with Christopher Vine in Nelson. In 1975 he travelled to Peru to help potters Harry and May Davis carry out a private aid project to establish a pottery in the Peruvian Andes.

From 1978 to 1980 he worked in Britain at the Coxwold Pottery, North Yorkshire, where he gained a love of traditional slipware.

Steven returned to New Zealand in 1980 and established Rocket Pottery. There he made domestic wood-fired pottery. During this time, he became a student of Theo Schoon, a Dutch Indonesian with a particular interest in non-western primitive and Maori art forms.

Schoon stimulated an interest in jade carving, Maori rock drawings and gourd carving in New Zealand in the 1950's and 60's and was a particular influence on painter Gordon Walters.

Schoon carved some clay stamps in collaboration with potter Len Castle, and made three copy sets. ; One set of over 100 different stamps he gave to Steve Scholefield and this is what he used to create the patterns on the bowls on display.

Steve has used these to repetitively stamp his bowls in a way that creates endless varieties of larger patterns, and which often, like Walters use of the koru shape, rely on positive-negative effects.

The first Rocket Pottery was destroyed by fire in 1988 and in 1990 Steven Scholefield re-established it at Himatangi Junction where he has a showroom open to the public