Monthly Archive for December, 2009

Charles Darwin and Matthew Boulton

Published by Debbie Rudder 4 Comments Tags: , , , .
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Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

We celebrated two bicentenaries in 2009: Matthew Boulton’s death and Charles Darwin’s birth. Is there a link between these two illustrious Englishmen?

Darwin bust, gift of Thomas and Martha Lennard, 1921

Darwin bust, gift of Thomas and Martha Lennard, 1921. Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

The key is the Lunar Society of Birmingham, which counted amongst its members Matthew Boulton, James Watt, Josiah Wedgwood and Erasmus Darwin. The Lunar nickname was applied because these men met to discuss science, technology and industry when the moon was full – so they could see themselves home.

Now Erasmus Darwin, a medical doctor who wrote screeds of purple poetry and posed questions about evolution, was grandfather to Charles but died before he was born. So we have an obvious two degrees of separation through Erasmus Darwin and his son Robert.

There is also a link through Josiah Wedgwood, who owned a Boulton and Watt engine and collaborated with Boulton in manufacturing jewellery. He was Charles’s maternal grandfather, but he also died before Charles was born. Although he doesn’t help bring our two bicentenarians closer, this link is worth noting as inheriting money from him (on his own account and through his wife, who was a cousin) allowed Darwin the leisure to observe, experiment and theorise.

wedgwood 00200937

Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

Portrait medallion, Josiah Wedgwood

Now Josiah’s wife Sarah lived to the age of 81 – and she knew Charles well. As she also knew Boulton, she is the link that gives us just one degree of separation.

It seems that two major anniversaries in one year are not enough for the Lunar Society. Visiting Melbourne recently, I discovered a delightful little exhibition at the National Galley of Victoria marking the 250th anniversary of Josiah Wedgwood’s pottery business. It’s worth visiting just to see the Portland vase, versions of which were owned by both Erasmus and Charles Darwin.

If you are a Wedgwood fan, you can also see some pieces on display in Powerhouse exhibitions: Boulton and Watt (behind the engine), Experimentations (‘chemical attractions’ section) and Inspired! Design across time.

Curating the seamy side- historic pubs in sydney

Published by Charles Pickett 1 Comment Tags: , , , , .

Hotel Marrickville

Hotel Marrickville. Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

Hotel Chatswood

Hotel Chatswood. Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

Hotel Rozelle

Hotel Rozelle. Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

These bars were designed for binge drinking, 1930s style. In those days excessive boozing was usually called the six o’clock swill, a feature of NSW pubs from 1916 to 1955, the period when hotels had to close at six o’clock. Pubs were designed to accommodate as many stand-up (hopefully) drinkers as possible. 

As well as more relaxed opening hours, today’s pubs are generally more inviting. But as the binge drinking issue suggests, they are never far from controversy and anti-social behaviour. 

The photos are part of an archive of the work of architect Sidney Warden, who designed more Sydney pubs than anyone else. Active during the 1920s and 1930s, Warden’s work includes the pictured hotels Rozelle, Marrickville and Chatswood as well as such familiar structures as the Clare, the Lansdowne, the Broadway, the Henson Park, the Star, the Native Rose, the Tennyson, the Oxford, the Charing Cross and the Light Brigade. 

The Powerhouse got into the pub business during the 1980s, when Tooth & Co, NSW’s major brewer for most of the 20th century, donated a vast collection of brewing and hotel artefacts. The PHM was one of the first major Australian museums to collect and display social history (as it was called in the 80s) or subsequent monikers including popular culture, Australian history and culture and other generic titles. 

In the 80s the aim was to identify and celebrate a unique ‘Australian identity’ constituted by pubs, sport, backyards and other elements of a casual, friendly, democratic, matey everyday life. This fragile construct fractured along with the assumptions that formed it. But the collections survived, venturing into areas difficult to predict. 

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Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

Sydney hotels were such a threatened species in the 1990s that I conducted ‘Heritage pub crawls’ for the PHM, encouraging appreciation of our hotel heritage. It was easy to be nostalgic about the six o’clock swill, ladies lounges and other remnants of pub life. Since then the pub trade has bounced back. Like most areas of our supposed ‘national identity’, it has also rebounded as a contested subject and site, even more so when poker machines were permitted in pubs. Not surprisingly the one-armed bandits have also found a place in the PHM collection.
 

Gambling, like drinking, is a major industry in Australia; like drinking it inflicts serious harm on some of its consumers. 

None of this affects the popularity of the subject. I’ve curated or co-curated five exhibitions about pubs and brewing, including two modest exhibitions for other institutions which attracted media and visitors out of proportion to their size. As a curator I can find plenty of respectable reasons to collect artefacts of booze and betting: Australia has been an innovator in the design of totalisators and poker machines, NSW pubs of the 1930s are one of the most unusual expressions of modern design. 

The true attraction of the subject lies elsewhere, of course, in its potential for fun, insobriety and damage, social and otherwise. As a result, the regulation and culture of drinking is perhaps the longest-running controversy of Australian history. The debate as to how these activities can be accommodated within society seems to be endless. 

What other Powerhouse collections have a similar appeal?

Meet the curator- Eva Czernis-Ryl

Published by Eva Czernis-Ryl 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , .
Eva Czernis-Ryl

Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski © Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved

Eva and part of the Doulton display in the ‘Inspired!’ exhibition. Above Bilton’s waratah plaque and jug, there is a stunning vase painted about 1900 by Edward Raby.

Name
Eva Czernis-Ryl

What is your specialty area?
I trained as an art and design historian and curator in Poland and my interests encompass decorative arts and design from the 17th century to now, mainly European and Australian. Some focus areas have been Meissen porcelain, Australian colonial gold and silver, Australian Art Nouveau, European and Australian product design and studio glass, metalwork and jewellery. At the Powerhouse, I’m responsible for a range of collection areas from ceramics and glass to metalwork and jewellery.

How long have you been working at the Museum?
Since 1985, when I joined the project team researching and developing exhibitions for the new Powerhouse Museum (opened in 1988).

Favourite object in the collection?
The Museum has an outstanding collection of early Doulton ceramics and among its many rare and striking objects is a pair of little-known porcelain wall plaques featuring red waratahs (Australian bush flowers) by the English artist Louis Bilton. Bilton’s luscious waratahs are magnificent! He painted one plaque when in Sydney in 1886 to illustrate ‘The picturesque atlas of Australia’ and it secured him a gold medal at the Centennial Exhibition in Melbourne. Its pair (see main image), which is almost identical, was painted in the Burslem studio soon after Bilton joined Doulton as a painter in 1892.

I suppose I should also mention my weakness for teapots (and kettles!) and tea services as seen from both social history and design perspectives. We have an exciting selection and among my favourites must be the 1878 Japanese-inspired kettle by Christopher Dresser, England’s pioneer of industrial design. Sharing the honour, are three sculptural tea and coffee sets, also in silver, crafted more recently in Italy and designed by three prominent architects: Aldo Rossi, Zaha Hadid and Melbourne’s Denton Corker Marshall. Interestingly, DCM was one of two Australian architectural firms (and 20 other architects ’fundamental to the debate on contemporary design’) invited by Alessi to submit designs for tea and coffee sets for their acclaimed ‘City of Towers’ project of 2002. The other was Tom Kovac Architecture who created another extraordinary set – I’m afraid it is not in our collection yet but you can see it in our book ‘Contemporary silver made in Italy’.

What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in your career at the Museum?
For the 1980s: ‘Style’, the Powerhouse’s inaugural decorative arts gallery which was considered highly innovative. Also my research for an article about our Meissen porcelain bust of Saxon court jester Schmiedel (complete with a mouse in his mouth), which is one of the most significant 18th century objects in our collection. This was pre email/internet era and my research took me to Dresden, then in East Germany, where my interest in Schmiedel was treated with great suspicion (I could be a Western spy!) and my contact, a librarian, would only meet with me secretly and definitely not in her public library. For the 1990s: exhibition ‘Australian gold and silver 1851-1900’. It was a sumptuous selection of about 190 treasures from public and private collections in Australia and England – some newly located and many never before on public display. The show remains the most important survey of Australian colonial jewellery and presentation pieces mounted in this country.

For the 2000s: exhibition book ‘Contemporary silver made in Italy’ and co-authoring, with Professor Kenneth Cavill, another publication about Australian studio and commercial jewellery and silver of the 1900-1950 period. Including stories about the Melbourne cup, Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race trophy and Arts & Crafts jewellery, this book will be published next year.

Merry Christmas!

Published by Melanie Pitkin 3 Comments Tags: , , , , , .
Santa marionette

Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

On this very festive day, I thought I would ‘unwrap’ for you some of the playful and eclectic Christmas related objects we have in our collection! Starting with this cardboard marionette of Santa Claus designed and printed by Raphael Tuck and Sons in Great Britain and made in Bavaria in 1905-1910. Raphael Tuck and Sons were well-known publishers from around the mid-19th to early 20th centuries who published for the royal family and were recognised for this service with a royal warrant from Her Majesty Queen Victoria in 1893.

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Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

These are three French hens nesting in rather plush surrounds, and as you have probably already guessed, belongs to one of twelve gift boxes in the collection celebrating the famous English Christmas carol – ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’. The carol starts:

On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a partridge in a pear tree…”

These boxes were designed and made by Stuart Devlin, an internationally renowned metalworker and designer from Australia (he also designed our decimal coinage). He made one of these boxes every year for 12 years and they are currently on display in the Museum’s front foyer (opposite the shop). The ‘Twelve Days of Christmas’ starts on December 25 and ends on the evening of January 5.

Xmas placemats

Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

These beautifully hand and machine-embroidered Christmas placemats were made in the early 1900s and, despite being used by a Sydney family every Christmas from the 1940s-1980s, have been kept in excellent condition!

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Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

Any thoughts what this is? To give you some sense of scale, it measures 70cm high x 65cm wide, which is just large enough to house a dog – because that’s actually what it’s for – it’s a dog kennel! It was designed between 1995 and 2000 by Richard Lee in Sydney and later modified to sit on the back of a bicycle. There is a lot to look at, both in terms of religious and Christmas imagery – the Christian cross, icon of Mary with child, Hindu gods, Japanese houses and gardens, a ‘G’Day mate!’ sign, powered by a battery-operated motor which causes the sign to flip over and display ‘Welcome to Sydney!’ (in celebration of the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games), disco balls, gold sequins and a Japanese miso soup bowl used for the dog’s water! I tell you, my dog, who is virtually pocket-sized, wouldn’t want a bar of sitting inside this kennel – and that’s when it isn’t perched on the back of a bike!

David Jones Christmas card

Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

Onto a necessary evil, especially at Christmas time, this is a 1983 David Jones Christmas account credit card, featuring their trademark houndstooth logo. It is one of three David Jones Christmas credit cards in the collection, along with 87/220-2 and 87/220-3, each of different designs.

Post advertisement

Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

This 1949 poster was designed by P. I. Cox for the Post Master General’s Department in Australia. But, how does one interpret ‘post early’ (apart from, “in time for Christmas”)? I received a Christmas card from my Aunty and Uncle in the UK in the first week of October this year because of the strikes and on-again off-again British Postal Service! Note to relatives – October is simply way too early, so in future, just send an e-card instead!

Gordon and Mary Andrews Card

designed by Gordon Andrews. Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

The Museum also has a lovely collection of personal Christmas cards designed by Gordon Andrews, which he and his wife Mary, sent out to family and friends each year. Gordon Andrews is best known for designing the first decimal currency bank notes in Australia, but he was also one of Australia’s foremost industrial designers.

Crackers

Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

And, what is Christmas without Christmas crackers? These paper and tinsel bonbons, still with their contents (whatever they may be!?), date to the 1950s. They complement other examples of Christmas crackers in the collection dating as early as the 1930s (89/1629) and even a Christmas cracker making machine, which is on display at Castle Hill (B2340).

From everyone here at Object of the Week, we wish you a wonderful Christmas and New Year and thanks heaps for reading our posts!

Meet the curator- Anni Turnbull

Published by Erika Taylor 0 Comments
Anni Turnbull

Photography by Marinco Kojdanovski © Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved

Name
Anni Turnbull

What is your specialty area?
I have worked on a diverse range of exhibitions during my time as a curator here, acquiring objects along the way. I’ve learnt about vastly different subject areas from car fanatics to futurists design and see myself as an interpreter, using a variety of tools to tell stories.
I love the idea of the power of individuals to change the way society thinks and moves. I think an object is made more meaningful with people’s stories around its design, function, use and relationship in a broader context of culture.

How long have you been working at the Museum?
I have worked as a curator for twelve years.

Individual Favourite object in the collection?
Our collection is so vast and diverse it’s a pleasure to go to the basement or the Open Display Store at Castle Hill and discover what we have. This also makes it very difficult to have one favourite object.

For sheer beauty I love the Delphos evening dress designed in 1907 by Mariano Fortuny, not only sinuous and flowing, but it also freed women from the restrictive restraints of the corset.

For sadness and the human condition is the boys dress worn by John Marsden, 1802 – 1803, it has a family tragedy behind it. Two-year-old John was wearing the dress when he died after falling into a pot of boiling water in the Marsden’s kitchen in August 1803. His death was a heavy blow to Elizabeth Marsden, whose first son Charles died in a carriage accident two years earlier in August 1801. In a letter to Captain John Piper in August 1804, Elizabeth wrote: ‘I think I need not remind you that this is a month that has been fatal to me and mine – I have therefore made a determination not to leave home or suffer my dear children out of my sight as little as possible until this fatal month has expired…”.

And for its fantastical design appeal I love the Stanfield ‘Supreme’ Mouse-Trap Machine: the machine was built and owned by one family and also represents the Australian tradition of ‘making do’. This Stanfield machine was built from second hand parts and was used continuously in a Mascot factory, between 1942-43 and August, 2000, producing 96 million mouse traps.

What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in your career at the Museum?

One of the first groups of objects I acquired for the museum was for the exhibition Cars and Culture: our driving passions in 1997. We had one archive of futurist industrial designer Charles Frederick Beauvais. Through research I uncovered another archive containing a wooden model rear engine car ( I’m pictured holding it) and fabulous drawings of a futuristic city of Sydney following the Utopic idea of technology as a solution and included heli-ferries departing from Sydney’s Wynyard station.

Beauvais, originally from England gave an Australian interpretation to an international futurist movement.

A favourite experience was developing the exhibition the ‘World Cup Dream: Stories from Australia’s soccer mums and dads’. Photographer Jean –Francois Lanzarone and I investigated the role of the 2006 Socceroos’s parents, most of them post World War II migrants each with fascinating lives and stories to tell, a passion for football and endless devotion to their children, unstintingly ferrying them between training and matches.

Working on the exhibition Greening the Silver City: seeds of bush regeneration and then travelling it around NSW to ten different towns has been fantastic. I feel like a story detective and have uncovered fabulous innovative local solutions to environmental problems by communities from Broken Hill to Yamba.

Christmas is the time for tipping….

Published by Lynne McNairn 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

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Collection, Powerhouse Museum

In the lead up to Christmas we are reminded by many causes and charities to remember those “less fortunate”.

 This Christmas card in our collection from the “Sanitary Man” (c.1950) reminds his customers of the nature of his service in its appeal for tips.

Our nightly toil is hard to bear,
With odour from the pans,
Yet Christmas time it gives us cheer,
For tips will come to hand.

A small army of sanitary carters or “Dunny Men” operated in the days before flushing toilets and sewerage were common place.  People had outdoor toilets with a seat constructed over a removable sanitary pan and on a regular basis – usually weekly – the full sanitary pan was taken away and replaced with an empty one. This is the job of the sanitary carter or “dunny man”.

Traditionally the “dunny man” operated out of sight in the small hours of the morning and along the back lane, but at Christmas it was time to remind people to be generous!

Lynne McNairn
Registrar

A daughter of Neptune – Annette Kellerman

Published by Einar Docker 6 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .
Mermaid costume

Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

Earlier in the year, I took a break from Registration duties to complete an internship in the Curatorial department under the guidance and supervision of Peter Cox, Curator of Australian Social History, as part of a Graduate Diploma in Museum Studies. The subject of my research was Annette Kellerman and my aim was to investigate if any new material or information might have surfaced relating to the Powerhouse collection of Kellerman costumes or from Kellerman’s career and life. While Kellerman is probably best known for her achievements as a long-distance swimmer, she was also an author, Vaudeville performer, lecturer and, perhaps most famously, a silent movie star.

Portrait of Annette

Collection, Powerhouse Museum

The Powerhouse Museum’s collection of Annette Kellerman costumes came to the Museum via the Sydney Opera House at the beginning of this century and comprises some 142 items. The material was collected from Annette herself by Mrs Barbara Firth back in 1975 – unfortunately little detail is known about the early life of the collection, due largely to the fact that Annette Kellerman was 89 at the time of acquisition and detailed records of provenance had not been kept. My internship culminated in a public talk detailing the results of my research at the Museum in November 2009.

Some of these interesting results include:

An interview with Mrs Barbara Firth, of which an edited portion is available here.

Re-discovered extra footage from one of Annette’s silent films, Neptune’s Daughter (1914) which you can view here.

Neptune’s Daughter was one of a number of ‘Big Budget’ silent films that Kellerman appeared in. This extraordinary footage adds almost six more minutes to the 19 minutes of known surviving film, and was supplied by Mary Ann Cade from Illinois USA. It was originally sourced (by others) from the Gosfilmofond archive in Russia.

Only one of Kellerman’s films ‘Venus of the South Seas’ (1924) is believed to have survived in its entirety to the modern day, and her biggest budget film ‘A Daughter of the Gods’ (1916) has no known surviving copies available. The results of this research project confirm that further discoveries of related material within diverse collections around the globe is possible, and is especially helped with databases increasingly going online and people with similar interests being able to connect and share information via the internet.

Model ship ‘Revenge’

Published by Erika Taylor 0 Comments Tags: , , , , .
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Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

 

The great thing about having our collection online is that it has made it very easy to search all the great objects we have hidden away!

This model ship was recently discovered by a member of the public, on our online database. It was built by his great grandfather, Frank H Lee, in the 1930s.

Although the ship ‘Revenge’ is significant in its own right, this object also tells the story of the many hours that a talented model maker put into creating this stunning model.

Mr Frank H Lee, appears to have been a prolific ship modeller. He seems to have constructed the models for his own enjoyment rather than for sale as many modellers did in this period. During the Depression modeller’s skill provided a source of income for some.

Whilst this particular model may not often be on display, having our collection online means it can be enjoyed for many generations to come.

Do any of our readers make models? Ive always wanted to know how they get those big ship models into the glass bottles….

Meet the curator- Kerrie Dougherty

Published by Kerrie Dougherty 2 Comments Tags: , .
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Photography by Sotha Bourn © Powerhouse Museum all rights reserved

Name
Kerrie Dougherty

What is your speciality area?
I’m the museum’s Curator of Space Technology and my areas of interest cover the history of astronautics and space flight, space education and public awareness, and social and cultural responses to space. In addition, since I’m also interested in science fiction and pop culture, I’ve also been involved with the museum’s Star trek, Star wars and Lord of the Rings exhibitions

How long have you been working at the Museum?
Almost 27 years!

What is your favourite object in the collection?
My favourite object in the museum’s collection overall is the Boulton and Watt beam engine, which I’ve always thought of as a gentle giant. Despite its massive size, it produced what we would today consider only a small amount of power-yet it represents the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution that shaped our technological world. It’s actually a lot harder for me to nominate my favourite object in the space technology collection: since I acquired them all, I’m fond of every one of them. I can’t just choose one, but I’ll mention a few: a small Apollo Lunar Module model, produced by the Grumman company to celebrate the Apollo 9 mission, when the LM made its first space qualifying test flight; the fairings (nose cone sections) from a British Black Arrow rocket that were recovered from the Woomera Rocket Range; a waste management system from a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft (yes-a space toilet!) and an Australian space experiment-the Aggregation of Red Cells apparatus-that was twice carried on space shuttle missions.

What piece of research or exhibition are you most proud of in your career at the Museum?
I’m very proud of developing Australia’s first major museum space display, the Space-Beyond this World exhibition (1988-2007), which was the first exhibition anywhere in the world to bring together examples of the space technology of the three Cold War superpowers. When I look back on it now, I am astonished that we were able to accomplish this in a period of Cold War tension. But I think that, even more, I love the ongoing challenge of developing the first international space technology collection in Australia. While the museum’s collection is very modest when compared to the major aerospace museums overseas, the Powerhouse is the only museum in Australia actively collecting in the space field and I am proud to have been able to develop the current collection essentially from scratch over almost 25 years.

When Haute Couture is not Haute Couture

Published by Melanie Pitkin 2 Comments Tags: , , .
Balsketch

Fashion illustration of Balenciaga dress by Alfredo Bouret . Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

 

Which French fashion house refused to join the Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture Parisienne and still does not belong today (which technically means that this fashion house is not even recognised as Haute Couture in the legal sense!)?

While you’re thinking, I’ll explain the name. Chambre Syndicale de la Haute Couture Parisienne (“Trade Union of Parisian High Fashion”) is one of three entities (along with prêt-a-porter men, or ready-to-wear clothing for men, and prêt-a-porter women, ready-to-wear clothing for women) making up the Fédération Française de la Couture, du Prêt-à-Porter des Couturiers et des Créateurs de Mode (yes – it’s a mouthful, but means “The French Federation of Fashion and of Ready-to-Wear Couturiers and Fashion Designers”)! It was founded in Paris in 1868 by Englishman, Charles Frederick Worth, initially to stop couture designs from being copied, but now plays more of a role in positioning and promoting French fashion and style.

CharlesWorthCharles Frederick Worth, Image courtesy of The Bourne Archive

The fashion house in question is Balenciaga. Founded by Cristobel Balenciaga in San Sebastian, Spain in 1918 (he opened a House in Paris 19 years later), Balenciaga refused to join the Chambre Syndicale for several reasons. He was a very private man. He avoided the press and he resisted the strict guidelines set forth by the Syndicale, which included during Balenciaga’s time: showing two collections per year; producing 75 new and original designs of day and evening wear for each of these collections and employing a minimum of 20 full-time people in their atelier. He also never wanted the House of Balenciaga to work for the mass-market, as Dior did, preferring to maintain an exclusive private clientele.

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Designed by Balenciaga. Collection, Powerhouse Museum.

89/250,

Today the fashion house is still not listed as a member of the Chambre Syndicale, continuing to respect Balenciaga’s wishes. But, what does this mean for them in the 21st century? I mean, the Syndicale protects couture houses from counterfeiting, now one of the biggest threats to the industry (although some may speculate whether or not this protection is actually succeeding) and is an advisory body, which surely serves as some kind of a safety net or guarantor to the fashion houses, and has been embraced by other big names like Chanel, Dior, Lacroix, Givenchy and Gaultier.

What is your take on Balenciaga and the Chambre Syndicale?