Peter spent his early years at Plateau Farm, Puhoi. In 1965-1966 he attended Elam School of Fine Arts in Auckland which started his interest in ceramics. Peter lived in various places north of Auckland and Sydney where he set up his own workshop.

In the late 1960's he headed to Sydney to take up a job at the Sturt Workshop where he worked for a year learning about ceramics production, after which he assisted Shiga Shigeo in his workshop, learning from the master potter.

In 1970 he returned to New Zealand with his family, setting up workshops at Pakiri (north of Auckland) and Te Wahapu further north, working with Paul Miller and Jack Davison.

In 1974 he moved to Onehunga, then to a farm in Puhoi. Here he was involved in the opening of a co-operative gallery in Warkworth and regularly sold work at craft shows around the country.

By the late 1980's he decided to return to Auckland to further his study in Chinese Culture and Asian History, setting up another workshop in Auckland and continuing to sell through the Warkworth Gallery as well as the Ponsonby Potters Gallery.

A trip to China in the early 1990's proved formative and influenced him to pursue studies in Archaeology, with a Song Dynasty kiln site there forming the basis of his MA thesis.

In the late 1990's Homes used a research grant to follow up an alternative study of Fujian Shui-ji temmoku in Denver Colorado, USA and this programme lead him to focus more on archeological opportunities. He continued to travel in the US, presenting ceramics research and conference papers, returning to NZ as an archaeological consultant in the late 2000's.

2009-2011 Holmes worked in Melbourne as an archeological consultant on large projects such as the historic Melbourne rail yards. In 2011 he moved to Tauranga as a part time archaeologist and is currently writing a book, due to be published in 2019.

Notes from Peter Holmes' CV 10/6/2019