My father, Peter Wilcockson, who has died aged 85, was a brilliant ceramic sculptor and painter. From 1965 to 1979, he was an enthusiastic member of staff (and eventually head of art) at Newland Park College of Higher Education, which became Buckinghamshire College of Higher Education during his time there. He was also a latent showman, treading the boards as Sir Toby Belch in Twelfth Night in a college production and designing the programme (featuring an engraving of himself and Shakespeare).
In 1979, Newland Park lost its teacher-training function to focus on business education. With redundancy, Dad briefly had the leisure to have a shot at broadcast quizzes, and to his delight was selected for Mastermind, Brain of Britain and Countdown. On Bamber Gascoigne's art quiz Connoisseur, Dad shone and was asked to act as a researcher for the second series. Later he wrote quiz questions for Runway.
After redundancy, he managed an antique painting gallery in Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, and adored discovering bargains in dusty sale rooms. His garden was a fruitful Eden, complete with strange sculptures and wonderful bird whistles that he used to charm the robins. It was a magical setting for epicurean outdoor lunches. His artwork was exhibited at local galleries and sold in the shop at St Albans Cathedral.
The home counties were a long way from Dad's early roots in rural Derbyshire, which he had escaped for service in the intelligence corps at the end of the second world war in India and Israel. After teacher-training college, he spent 11 years as head of art at Queen's School, Rheindalen, Germany, a school for children of the military. There, he met his future wife, Doreen, a fellow art teacher. They married in 1963.
He was a wonderful grandfather to Molly and Alex and stepgrandfather to Louisa, and also helped reluctant young readers at the local primary school. His environmental campaigning brought back to life the river Misbourne in Buckinghamshire. At 80, after a close call with death, he threw away the key to the drinks cabinet. The mild cognitive impairment that beset him was not always perceptible; almost to the end he could still recite the lines of Goethe he had memorised in order to learn German. The apple trees he grew from pips are now an orchard.
He is survived by Doreen, me and my sister, Laura; and his brother Brian.