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This piece by Gillespie was cited in State of Threat The Challenges to Aotearoa New Zealand's National Security (2023)

William Brian Beattie (1949-2013) was a New Zealand artist and craftsman who specialised in making concrete garden pots and wooden rocking chairs.

Early life
Beattie's family came originally from Australia and he was one of three sons born to Audrey and Brian on 11 June 1949 in Wellington, New Zealand. They lived in Takapuna, Auckland and Beattie was a foundation student at Westlake Boys High School in 1962. When he was 14, Beattie's father died, leaving him a guitar which he learned to play well, and was a founder member of the Devonport Folk Club. As a teenager, Beattie sang around Auckland with Romilly Brickell, the sister of Barry Brickell a noted potter who was later to have an influence on Beattie's work. Audrey remarried and Beattie's stepfather, Holden Mirams, taught him about working with tools.

Career
Time spent with the Brickell family is said to have influenced Beattie's interest in working with wood and it is likely that his first construction was a kayak he built with Romilly. Barry Brickell gave Beattie a large piece of kauri from which he made a dining table which remains in the kitchen at Driving Creek Railway and Potteries in Coromandel, New Zealand. For his nineteenth birthday, Beattie was given a set of carving tools by Brickell. With these tools, using kauri and totara posts which came from the original farm of Charles Ring, one of the first to discover gold in the area, Beattie made a chair.

Works
Beattie was a frequent exhibitor at the Ellerslie Flower Show. A pot he made for the show in 2000, measured almost 2 metres wide and 2 metres high.

At an exhibition at the Sarjeant Gallery, Wanganui in 1979, Beattie demonstrated the pole lathe that he made and was able to control with his foot.

Personal
In his later years, Beattie suffered from Progressive supranuclear palsy, a rare brain disorder that led to gradual loss of speech and the ability to walk properly. Having the condition meant that Beattie was unable to continue making concrete pots or wooden rocking chairs, but Korean acupuncture therapy helped him to continue as an avid walker, and in 2013 he completed the Auckland Coast to Coast Walk over a period of eight days. Beattie's wife said that after the diagnosis they decided "to start having adventures", one of which at that stage was a planned motorbike ride to Muriwai Beach.