Richard Stratton was born in Ōtepoti Dunedin in 1970 and graduated from Otago School of Art in 1993. He subsequently worked as a production thrower at commercial potteries in England and Scotland, travelling extensively before settling in Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington.

Stratton’s distinctive ceramic stream of consciousness is the result of encyclopedic knowledge of historic industrial pottery technologies and avid curiosity about any controversy in the social fabric. He views a teapot on a suburban kitchen table as a political object embodying centuries of global trade, cultural conflict and exchange.

His first solo exhibition, Nurturing Dialectics: A Legation of Teapots, was held at Anna Miles Gallery in 2007. He received the Dowse Art Museum Deane Award for Decorative Arts & Design in 2010, was artist in residence at the International Ceramic Research Centre, Guldagergaard, Denmark, in 2015, and won the Premier Award at the Portage Ceramic Awards in 2017.