David lives and works in the Waikato, New Zealand.

David’s path to clay wound through film and paint before it found fire. After a decade in the film industry and years spent on oiled canvases, he discovered ceramics almost by accident – vases, jewellery, engineered forms – until raku found him, and something clicked into place.

For the past two years, David has been given over entirely to raku sculpture, refining forms and firing techniques that feel both distinctly his own and quietly universal. His work draws from three enduring threads: Te Ao Māori and the spiritual world of his Te Arawa lineage, where fire carries ancestral knowledge; the Japanese philosophy of wabi-sabi, which finds beauty in imperfection and impermanence; and the clean, considered lines of mid-century design.

Central to his practice is a raku kiln built from an old Castrol drum – improvised, personal, and entirely his own ritual space. Here, at close to 1000°C, earth is transformed by flame and chance in a technique with roots seven centuries deep. David sees fire not as a tool but as a collaborator, and cracks and flaws not as flaws at all, but as the mark of something honestly made.