Gallery Archives - Rahu Road Pottery

Summer Maintenance

Duncan Shearer — Mon, 19 Feb 2024 21:28:03 +0000

This year we weren’t being drowned with relentless rain, so I got busy catching up on a years’ deferred maintenance.

First up was another retaining wall behind the studio, which helps level the ground higher up the section and also makes walking around the back of the studio a lot easier. It’s the smallest retaining wall I’ve built on the section, but the most complicated with angles.

Next up was a staircase leading from the studio deck up to the new platform, way safer than the slippery grass slope. Fitting it in with the wall was a bit of a puzzle, still not quite finished but I’m waiting to see how the ground settles.

Then our little gallery needed attention, firstly a good clean, so all the pots and shelving was removed. Then a repaint of the walls as the ‘whitewash’ paint job was looking tired, a ceiling touch up and finally the floor was sanded and stained black and two coats of Danish Oil applied. The furniture also had a makeover (apart from the shelves that utalise an old ladder) some old rimu was cleaned, oiled and became the uprights, then some of the old shelving was cut down or joined together to make two new shelving units. More is planned as time allows.

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Hot weather firing

Duncan Shearer — Fri, 25 Feb 2022 22:13:19 +0000

The heat of a particularly hot summer day does make firing our wood kiln that much more exhausting, but we’re lucky that we have a lovely cooling stream to lie in if we do get overheated.

The heat also probably helped make it a quicker firing at under 12 hours. The clay mix was also on the final formulation so when the pots came out looking good it was a relief that all the testing was paying off.

So, our little gallery is now full of pots and open for business – check out our hours on the home page.

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The gallery is finally painted

Duncan Shearer — Sat, 27 Feb 2016 22:41:20 +0000

This historic milestone, long delayed and missed many times in self imposed deadlines, has finally been reached. Most of February seems to have been spent with paint brush in hand, painting either a grey trim or green tin paint. It means that the gallery build can finally be signed off. Not only that but the Hauraki District Council have granted me a building consent for the studio/storage shed that will need to be built before the winter arrives.

[See image gallery at rahuroadpottery.co.nz]

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Latest stock in the gallery

Duncan Shearer — Tue, 26 Jan 2016 20:13:45 +0000

Here’s a couple of views of the gallery with fresh work from the latest firing. We’re open all summer long, pretty much every day, but if you’re coming a distance then give us a call first to make sure we’re not down at the river having a swim.

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Rahu Road Gallery Building

Duncan Shearer — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 09:38:43 +0000

Here’s how I built the gallery

The gallery is a 10 square metre tin box, with a 50 degree pitched roof and designed to be relocateable if needed. It’s been fun translating ideas from sketches through the technical drawings to the building process. I’ve found the greatest pleasure is when the site is cleared and you pace out the site, sit and cogitate on the sun’s angles, think about the wind and rain and finally pin out the corners — locking forever the building idea to the ground.
The actual construction process is a battle of accuracy over tools and materials. Somehow things work out and the skeleton finally pops up, but is it as my minds-eye saw it? The ideas change as the building is constructed, but how malleable is the shed to changes when I’ve already cut the timber and tin?
The last 5% of the build seems to take disproportionately long, but the end is in sight. One of decisions that I’ve taken longest over is the paint colours. But I’m still hopeful to have the building finished, both inside and out by Christmas. At the moment it is fully operational with the inside painting done and lots of work to choose from.

[See image gallery at rahuroadpottery.co.nz]

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Our story so far…

Duncan Shearer — Thu, 07 Jan 2016 09:35:17 +0000

This project started in May 2014, when Charade and I moved out of Paeroa. We were lucky to find a north-facing hill, in an old mining town called Mackaytown, next door to the beautiful Karangahake Gorge, up a quiet road with existing tourist traffic. Our dream of setting up a pottery similar to what we saw in Europe years ago could now become a reality.
The consequences of living here soon hit us – it’s a wet part of the country, suffers from the occasional high wind event and the property was a tiny two bedroom cottage with a deck and ½ an acre of scrub and gorse. Our entire pottery studio contents, gas kiln, bricks and half the household goods had to spend a damp winter under leaky tarps. Our neighbour took pity on us and lent us space in her garage and I fixed up the back porch and closed it in making it a small, but warm studio for Charade.
My kiln was a pile of bricks at the bottom of the hill; most had survived being in two kilns before and so were very fragile. I built the kiln shed out of old bits and pieces of a garage left behind by the previous owner and started hauling bricks up the hill and re-building my wood soda kiln. Each brick needed cleaning, often grinding and although I thought I’d been clever when dismantling the kiln and stacking the sorted bricks on pallets, in reality it was a confusing jigsaw. The upside was it gave me a chance to do some engineering tweaks to my previous kiln design, like increasing the amount of metal work around the kiln. By December 2014 the kiln was mostly finished and I built a small lean-to off the kiln shed to house my gas kiln, finally getting it out of the weather.
Our game plan when we moved here (such as it was) started with the kilns – without them operational we couldn’t make a thing. Next I thought that a gallery/stockroom would be a quick summer project before I cracked into the studio build. The gallery took longer than I thought and ended up also costing a bit more – my ‘grand design’ in miniature. It was fun designing it, mostly fun building it and I’m happy with the way it turned out. A lick of paint on the outside before Christmas and our door will be open to every passing customer.
We have ploughed all our energy over the last 18 months into this land and it has rewarded us. We have modest gardens underway, tamed most of the lawns and scrub and improved our little cottage making it warmer and slightly less cluttered. I’m now underway with the studio build and hope to have some kind of shell up by Christmas. One pleasant surprise that our land has given us is clay, we’re sitting on a big pile of famous Coromandel terracotta that I’m increasing using in my pots, along with sand from the stream across the road.
Our goal for the future is to have a studio to make pots in. To teach others how to make vessels that function, that are made of the land, that relate to the food from the garden and serve as an enriching experience when used. We need an antidote to the bland and impoverished commercial crockery that is unashamedly about our place and our time.
What I have learnt along the way is to dream, to have a passion worth pursuing. To be prepared to work constantly at it, chipping away at the hundreds of tasks, but to stop every now and then to listen to the stream and the Tui.

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