THE ANNEKE BORREN COLLECTION Tuesday, 31 October 2017 - 10:00 AM start
An Artist’s Home A Maker’s Collection ANNEKE BORREN There are few areas in which New Zealand art is renowned on the world scene. But in the 1970s and 80s, New Zealand Studio Pottery reached those heights. This was due in part to the Fletcher Brownbuilt Pottery Award (later known as the Fletcher Challenge Ceramics Award) that ran from 1977 to 1998. The Fletcher Brownbuilt exhibitions were internationally regarded as one of the three top ceramic exhibitions alongside Mino in Japan and Faenza in Italy. Over decades New Zealand forged the reputation of being some of the best and most creative potters in the world. It will be remembered as ‘the golden years of clay’. The history of those years has been slow to be told. Only recently have a few top potters, out of necessity, started to publish their own involvement recording their history and telling the story of their art. What is generally not realised is that the huge groundswell of potting over those decades and the mass of artists working with the same medium helped all those potters reach heights they could not have achieved on their own. No one works in isolation. I arrived in New Zealand in early 1963, as a 16-year-old, already a burgeoning potter. I quickly became part of this clay movement, and still am. My home and the collection I have built up throughout my career has become a tribute to those ‘makers of clay’. The collection has come from my colleagues and their work. Their artistic essence has graced my home for decades. I have dusted my friends once a fortnight, meet them again and remembered their stories. A ‘Maker’s Collection’ is very different from a ‘Collector’s Collection’, because it carries ‘the intimacy of knowing, feeling, and instant recognition’. My living with these treasures has enriched me totally, and I will carry the memories and their spirit within me. Included in this collection is my own historical pottery collection. Since 1964 I have kept pieces with the idea putting together my own three dimensional curriculum vitae. My grateful thanks go to Roy Cowan and Juliet Peter, who introduced me to the New Zealand potting community and involved me from the beginning. Also to Howard Williams for his photography and Andrew Grigg, who understands the importance of the New Zealand ceramics market. And lastly but not least my daughters, Tahi and Tamara, who encouraged me to ‘Let go’. ANNEKE BORREN Anneke Borren – potter and collector. By Rick Rudd Anneke Borren was born in the Netherlands and her European heritage informed her practice as a potter. This was in direct contrast with the Anglo-Oriental aesthetic dominant in New Zealand pottery of the 1960s and 1970s. I coined the phrase 'New Zealand Delft' to describe her work when a survey of her career was shown at my museum, Quartz, last year. Anneke has taken the quintessentially Dutch technique of painting on the dry unfired glaze for much of her work throughout the fifty years she has been working with clay and reinvented it in a contemporary style. This difficult technique was made famous by Delft pottery in the 17th and 18th centuries. Anneke even worked in the Royal Dutch Delft factory for a while in 1967. She has retained an enormous collection of her work throughout her career, many of them her 'firsts', ie the first piece of a new design or idea. She very generously has given a collection of twenty-two works as a mini survey to my museum but this is just the tip of a very large iceberg. Anneke has made major contributions to potters' societies over the years and, though her association with potters, artists and object makers, collected a large amalgamation of treasures which have filled her home. She has decided it is time for a change in lifestyle with an incredible downsizing. This auction gives the opportunity to acquire objects selected with an artist's eye and chosen with an understanding of the necessary techniques, abilities and ideas required to execute them. Now all these special pieces are to be set free from one home to find new lives in other collections – enjoy and treasure! Rick Rudd
Anneke Borren prices realised.pdf (967 kb)