Baye Riddell

Baye Pewhairangi Riddell (born 1950) is a New Zealand ceramicist, composer and musician of Ngāti Porou and Te Whānau-a-Ruataupare descent.

Riddell was born in Tokomaru Bay in 1950 and began working with clay in the early 1970s, while living in Christchurch. His early work fits within the contemporary movement in New Zealand craft pottery, largely influenced by the Anglo-Orientalism of Bernard Leach and Japanese potters who were influential in New Zealand, such as Shoji Hamada. Riddell, who had become distant from his Māori heritage, started putting Māori motifs on his pots, and in 1974 he became a full-time potter, the first Māori artist to commit to this profession.

In 1989 he and Nathan were awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to establish an exchange with Native American artists. In 2011 he was awarded the Creative New Zealand Craft/Object Fellowship.