Giving unloved second-hand tableware a new purpose is a passion for a local artist.
Shannon Courtenay, of Cardrona, creates tableware sets from items she finds in secondhand stores.
A journey from coffee to ceramics was how it started for Courtenay.
While working at a cafe at the Morris and James pottery factory in Matakana in the North Island, Courtenay struck up a friendship with factory founder Anthony Morris.
Courtenay is one of the artists exhibiting at the RenewArt project created by the Three Lakes Cultural Trust, which opens this Friday at the Lake Wanaka Centre.
She said her idea for the exhibition theme of ‘‘renewal’’ was finding single items of tableware in second-hand stores, for example glassware ‘‘that used to be a part of a set but there is just one glass left’’.
She used moulds in clay to retain the shape of the original items, but created a complete set instead of just one item.
Working in clay took patience — ‘‘I heard once that potters love disappointment’’.
There was much that could go wrong at the different stages of making items, but that was ‘‘just part of the process’’.
