Derek Morris obituary | Sculpture

My friend Derek Morris, who has died aged 85, taught sculpture at Norwich School of Art (now the Norwich University of the Arts) for a quarter of a century up to his retirement in 1990.

He became the sculpture course leader there in 1971, after which he and his colleagues set about building a fine reputation in that discipline for the school, which became a first-choice destination for many art students in the 1980s.

Part of Derek’s success as head of the course was his promotion of the attitude that sculptural ideas need to be based on an extensive knowledge of materials and processes. It was an approach manifest in his own work as a sculptor, and one which he was able to put into practice more determinedly once he had retired from teaching.

Derek grew up in the atmosphere of making; he was six when he mixed his first bowl of plaster. His mother, Connie (nee Brookes), was an accomplished weaver and embroiderer, and Jack, his father, was a draughtsman and pattern maker for decorative sculpture, with a workshop at home in Birmingham, the city where Derek was born. His elder sister, Jean, was the first female student of jewellery at the Royal College of Art and became a jeweller and silversmith.

After attending King Edward’s grammar school in Birmingham, Derek graduated with a first-class fine art degree from the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and was awarded a Hatton scholarship in 1962 that enabled him to remain at the university for an additional year. There he met Christina Rich, an undergraduate, who became his wife in 1963.

Further study at Chelsea School of Art followed, and then a spell back at Newcastle University, before his teaching career began on the foundation course at Norwich School of Art in 1966, later becoming a tutor in sculpture and then course leader. While teaching he settled with his family in Tasburgh, Norfolk, where he renovated the 15th-century thatched cottage they lived in.

In retirement Derek threw himself again into his own sculpture work, exhibiting regularly across East Anglia and once saying that “if I cannot enter my studio on a regular basis, my life becomes disjointed and lacking in serious purpose”. He also became an expert gardener and cook, taking the runner-up slot in an Observer newspaper cookery competition of 1992 and winning a regional semi-final of BBC TV’s MasterChef series in 1995.

In 1998 he began a six-year stint as president of the Royal British Society of Sculptors (now the Royal Society of Sculptors), helping to increase its membership internationally.

He is survived by Christina, and their children, Abigail, Nathan, Simeon and Lucy, and grandchildren, Ottilie, Rufus and Agatha.