Vale Alistair Whyte.

Alistair Whyte passed away peacefully on Monday 5th June, after a long illness.

Alistair Whyte was unique among Australian Artist Potters for his exceptional early life experiences and long and thorough training/education in ceramics.

Alistair initially studied at Bendigo Institute of Technology/TAFE and then spent 5 years in Japan studying at the famous Kyoto University of Arts, followed by a two year stint in the workshop of renown Kyoto porcelain potter Katsuno Hirokuni in Kyoto.

This must be the most thorough education and vocational training of an Australian porcelain potter that I have ever encountered.

I first became aware of Alistair’s work back in the mid 80’s. I was amazed at his technical ability with porcelain. I was interested in discovering something about porcelain myself, as I had been making a few experiments mixing Australian local raw materials, but with no specific training and no one to mentor me in this regard, I was making very slow progress. So it was very exciting to see such sophisticated work suddenly appear here in the Sydney galleries.

Later, I got to meet Alistair in person, when he travelled up to Mittagong to Sturt Workshops. Alistair came out to find us here in remote Balmoral Village were no one ever comes, unless they are lost. We found that we had certain interests in common and have kept in touch, initially via letter, and then email ever since.

Alistair made exceptionally delicate and fine translucent porcelain. He developed skills that most of us mere mortals only dream of. Over the years we managed to meet up half a dozen times and exchanged bags of aged porcelain clay bodies and also swapped pieces of our work.

He is survived by his wife and daughters. He will be sadly missed by those lucky enough to have met him.

It will be a very long time before we see porcelain work of such sophistication and delicacy made here by an Australian.

Alistair managed to complete a book on porcelain making before he passed away. It will be published posthumously.

Sincerely

Steve