Katherine Smyth

In 2003, a Creative New Zealand Professional Development grant, and a New Work Grant the following year allowed Smyth to travel to London and the Middle East to research Bronze Age ceramics and traditional foods and create a body of work as a response.^[4] In 2012 she was awarded another Creative New Zealand grant to begin producing a series of work called Zoomorphic, based on animal forms.^[3][5]

In 2000, Smyth won a Merit Award at the New Zealand Society of Potters Royal Easter Show, winning the Premier Award at the Waiclay Awards. In 2007, she won a Merit Award in the Portage Ceramic Awards.^[6]

Douglas Lloyd Jenkins argues that Smyth’s work has become a highly significant part of the history of New Zealand studio pottery, “...she produces works that are delicate, but not fragile, utilitarian, but not dull...thus her ‘works have become part of the everyday life of many younger New Zealanders with a claim to some culinary skill or design consciousness.”^[7]

Smyth’s works are held in the collections of Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, The Dowse Art Museum, the Auckland War Memorial Museum, the Wallace Arts Trust, the Museum of London and the British Institute for Archeology and History in Jordan.^[8][9]