Chris Weaver

Early life

Weaver was born in Te Awamutu, New Zealand in 1956. In 1975, he graduated from Otago Polytechnic with a Diploma in Fine and Applied Arts, completing a Ceramics Certificate the following year.

Career

Weaver largely produces clay tableware with minimal surface decoration. As Peter Gibbs wrote, “because he likes the enjoyment he gets from using hand-made objects, he especially likes making functional work.”

Weaver’s key influences include the work of his teacher Michael Trumic, potter Hans Coper, English sculptor Henry Moore, Scandinavian design and Japanese craft traditions.

His series of ‘flatiron’ teapots, based upon a common colonial household item, the flatiron, have become an iconic part of New Zealand ceramic and design history. Douglas Lloyd Jenkins called this series “a seminal work of twentieth-century New Zealand design…” He wrote, “at a time when New Zealanders, both Pakeha and Maori, were re-examining their joint colonial past and not always liking what they saw, Weaver's teapot seemed to reach back into the past and pull out something unexpected, something stoic, and something symbolic of survival and eventual revival.”

In 1995, Weaver was awarded a grant through Creative New Zealand to travel and study in the United States, the United Kingdom and Ireland. In 2007, he was one of six New Zealand potters invited to undertake a residency at FuLe International Ceramic Art Museum, in Fuping, China. In 2010, he was invited as an Artist in Residence at the Sturt Arts Centre in Mittagong, Australia.

Recognition

Collections

Chris Weaver’s work is held in the collections of the Auckland War Memorial Museum; The Dowse Art Museum; the Suter Art Gallery, Nelson; Canterbury Museum; Hawkes Bay Museum, Napier; Shepparton Art Museum, Australia; and Mino Ceramic Park in Tajimi, Japan.