During a very unhappy time struggling with maths, chemistry and physics for a B.Sc., I kept a friend company in a pottery night-school class.

[6] In 2013 he was a finalist in the Portage Ceramic Awards with the work Waitakere Still Life of Ernie and Keith and Ewald, a group of white lustre vases which referenced key potters Ernest Shufflebotham, who designed for Crown Lynn in New Zealand, Keith Murray, who trained Shufflebotham at Wedgwood, and Swedish designer Ewald Dahlskog, whose ceramics shown in London in the 1930s had inspired Murray.

[7] Key influences include Hans Coper, who was his tutor at the Royal College, and Lucie Rie, a long-term mentor and friend.

[4]: 58  This sets Parker apart from many New Zealand potters of his own and the previous generation, who, guided by Bernard Leach, looked to Japan for their inspiration.

[4]: 58  Craft historian Helen Schamroth writes that Parker's 'aesthetic sensibility and philosophy are more related to the European design movements of de Stijl and the Bauhaus than to Bernard Leach and [Shoji] Hamada, who influenced a number of his peers'.

[5]: 72, 74 Reviewers of Parker's work often comment on his pieces' simplicity, precision, elegance, finish (either extremely smooth or craggily textured), use of black, white, and brilliant polychrome colours, and undermining conventions through unusual textures, colours, shapes and displays.

[4]: 58–59  Parker himself has said: "I am interested in the ordinariness and the normality of conventional china cabinet and mantelpiece decorative art ceramic ornaments and then pushing these to extremes or the straightforwardly bizarre.

[11] In October 2016 the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa opened John Parker: Handmade Precision.

He has designed over 23 productions drama and musical theatre with Auckland Theatre Company including The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Mum’s Choir, Middle Age Spread, The Rocky Horror Show, Noises Off, Waiting For Godot, Rosencrantz and Guildernstein Are Dead, Into The Woods and The Glass Menagerie.

[13] Other productions he has done the set design for include opera's Pagliacci and Il Trovatore and New Zealand play Waiora.

It includes contributions by Jim Barr and Mary Barr, Garth Clark, Andrew Clifford, Grace Cochrane and Douglas Lloyd Jenkins, with new photography by Haruhiko Sameshima including a collaboration with lighting designer Phillip Dexter.

[14] In 1999 Parker was made a life member of Auckland Studio Potters and awarded the Waitakere City Millennium Medal for services to the community.

[2]: 92  In 2004 Parker received Set Designer of the Year at the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards for Big River.