It took about nine months of due diligence and negotiation, checking all the tax invoice books and doing the modelling required for the bank but unwavering support from our family and friends along with Royce & Trudi’s enormous generosity made the prospect of owning a piece of New Zealand Pottery history a reality.

After several working visits with Royce over the past year, leaving the McGlashen factory to return home to Christchurch became harder each time, we simply didn’t want to leave. By August 2024, we knew we had to go all in: sell the house, quit our careers, and fully commit to life as potters.
 
The sweetener of the whole thing was we were going to learn from one of New Zealand’s true ceramics legends. With sixty years of mastering the art and production practices in clay this was a ‘now or never’ opportunity to learn from Royce McGlashen! He’s been in almost every day with Trudi, and we’ve been putting in a lot of work – we love it so much.

Coral is a Civil Engineer with Honours and one of New Zealand’s water industry experts – so, practical and creative engineering for Coral is a great fit with clay, especially factory operations and managing our production line, and designing new shapes. It helps that Coral had been teaching wheel forming lessons at a local Christchurch studio prior to heading into the purchase but also, we’ve had to re-learn everything the right way, from a true master. We are happy being dutiful sponges soaking up all the skills and tricks acquired over a sixty year career completely dominated by clay. Royce is particularly well known for his throwing skills and his hand skills in decoration; Coral is picking up the hand-decorations and is a painter herself. We are absolutely loving full immersion in the world of creating ceramics.
Josh is the business minded partner every engineer and potter needs: a big thinker, big ideas and a lateral brain with an interesting background in film & television. He has various film producer credits and a long history of sales & marketing work, from running a television studio to managing national accounts for textile wholesalers. Josh has also fallen in love with the wheel and is throwing hours and hours of clay with each new tip from Royce and Coral.

Coral: Colour, shape, and curiosity. Matching shape and function with colour is my ultimate approach to art, and clay is the same: how to make everyday use of ceramics both a special experience and a comfortable one.

Josh: Colour. Variety. Learning to love repetition (repeat what works is a magic framework). Classically distracted and busy minded people, I think we both love the stimulation of creating every day, but it's really important to bend towards process and form good habits.