Mr Gregory (60) and his visual artist wife Laura bought the former Waikouaiti Post Office in late 1989, a few months after it closed, and it has since doubled as their home, and their studio.
And, most weekday afternoons, it is also a gallery.At one stage he used to cheerfully devote 15-hour days to potting work, but recent "dodgy health" had meant sharply reduced hours.
"Mister Smaug", a 2-year-old cat, named after a fearsome dragon in J.R.R. Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit, is a keen and excited explorer, and makes a good early walking companion.
Most mornings, about 7am, Mr Smaug, who is mainly an outside cat, shows up for his walk, and often dashes ahead of his owner to take up a dominant position at a little bridge over a nearby stormwater channel.
During the walk, Mr Gregory sometimes resumes the outdoor sketching he once did, and at first the cat was greatly puzzled when his companion sat on a camping stool and started to draw.
Given his health challenges, Mr Gregory had found the daily feline walk "delightful because it gets the day off to a good start".
After consulting his GP two years ago, he learned he had a blood disorder, which was "technically a cancer".
The condition was "manageable" but not curable, and required him to take a daily dose of chemotherapy medication, and had made a "serious impact" on his energy levels.
"You need several lifetimes to explore what potting has to offer," he said.
He was continuing his potting as long as he could, and "enjoying the richness of its history, the physicality of the clay, and the pleasing humanity of making a simple functional object".
He still loved working on the potter’s wheel, and it remained "a challenge to use it well".
"The wheel needs regular practice, just like learning a musical instrument, and it takes many years to be really accomplished at working on it."
"I like that clay has personality, and that it takes time to get to know it.
"Clay has always been useful — it can make a cup, a bowl, a vessel to store water, or tiles to make a roof to keep a potter dry!"
English-born, Mr Gregory had long been mainly a painter, as well as a writer and musician, before becoming a potter in Waikouaiti "quite by surprise" in 2004, after meeting local potter Peter Watson, who also helped with his early development.
Mr Gregory had studied at the Lancaster School of Art before emigrating with his family to New Zealand when he was 17.
He completed a diploma in fine art at Otago Polytechnic in the mid-1980s, and after some time in the North Island, headed back south in 1989.
He had "really enjoyed the potting" and hoped the relatively few pots he was now producing would also be "more personal and adventurous".
