Meet our Contributors...
Borrowed Earth
Borrowed Earth has been going for a good twenty years now and my goodness we have seen so many positive changes in that time towards New Zealand and handmade products.
A long, long, long, long time ago after leaving school I worked in insurance for some time. The plan was always to go to art school (never happened!). But I did end up leaving my job without really thinking things through and being at a bit of a loss. I was still living at home and Mum had done Pottery and still had her Pottery wheel in the garage, so with her help, I just started playing around and thought it was a lot of fun. I guess I caught the ‘clay bug’! Slowly but surely I started taking over Dads garage to the point where he gave in and started moving everything out (cheers Dad!) And the garage became my first studio. Mum had worked for Peter Collis (New Zealand mega master potter) so I had the ‘means to get in’ (Yay Mum!) and worked in his studio for about a year. Such a great opportunity and I learnt so much. So then I just kept on making (very bad!) pots and sold them at markets, to friends and family (thanks guys!). Back them there were no ‘cool’ markets like there are now! I also had the chance to be part of a craft collective shop for a few years which really taught me a lot about the ‘other side’ of selling your work and how demanding retail can be. Mean while I meat Richie who later would become my partner in life and in business! He came on board with Borrowed Earth after he had been made redundant from his job. At that stage the business wasn’t quite up to supporting us both. So we made the hard call for him to go back to a 9 to 5 job so we could grow the business enough for him to come back into it and we could get a place of our own ( we all know how banks hate to lend $$ to anyone who has their own business!) Richie has been the other half of Borrowed Earth now for ten years. Today we are living in beautiful Whangaparaoa in a little 1960’s batch with our four cats (the boys!) with our studio ‘out the back’. Its still a joy to be able to make things that people want to buy and that we love to make! So (that was a pretty condensed version of my life!) and I just wanted to say to anyone out there that is struggling to make it.... If you really want it, keep going!! It will all be worth it someday real soon!