About Brendan Adams Design

In 1987 I started working in clay with 2 collegues I met at Otago Polytech where I majored in painting. With Bruce Haliday and Sue Newby I learnt how to slipcast. In 1988 together with my partner Kathryn Adams I opened up a shop called “Out of the Blue” in Kingsland.  Together we started to make a living from our pottery.  In 1995 we again met up with Bruce and Sue and open “Out of the Blue Workshops”, which we ran together for 3 years in Kingsland.  After buying a house in Pt Chev there was a strong attraction to setting up the studio at home where we could bring up our two children, Sam and Kim.

In 2013 we opened Front Room Gallery where along with our work we enjoyed having exhibitions of invited potters.

In 2021, after working in our studio in Pt Chev for 24 years we moved to Matakana where we have almost setup a new pottery studio.  

Early on my work focused on producing bright coloured, decorative slipcast ceramics, origanally using the Crown Lynn clay.  Along side this I have always created sculptural pieces utilising other materials with ceramics such as steel, brass, aluminium and wood.  These works have been exhibited throughout New Zealand in major competitions and exhibitions where I have won several awards, and am represented in the Auckland Museum, James Wallace and regional collections.

Over the years have enjoyed teaching ceramics part time at Unitec, Auckland Studio Potters Society and workshops around New Zealand

 I trained as a painter but it was colour and all the possibilities of form and texture that attracted me to ceramics, and I am still stuck in the mud! One of the great things about clay is that there never seems to be an end to what you can do with it. As someone who likes to muck around with lots of ideas, clay has been the perfect partner in crime. I really do feel I have only just started.