Author Archive for Eva Czernis-Ryl

Matcham Skipper (1921-2011)

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2005/258/1-2 Pendant, on chain, silver, designed and made by Matcham Skipper, Montsalvat, Victoria, Australia, 1960-1969 Collection: Powerhouse Museum

A legend of Melbourne’s bohemian world of the post war decades, Matcham Skipper was a sculptor and jeweller with passion for both the art of metal and unconventional lifestyle. As a jeweller, Skipper was mostly self-taught, drawn to experimenting with silver and gold ‘because of their sensual, ductile qualities’. Most of his jewellery was made using the lost wax casting technique. Inspired by European myths and legends and the work of the French sculptor Auguste Rodin, he developed his unique style in the Montsalvat artist colony at Eltham where he had his studio-dwelling complete with a foundry for casting bronzes.

Skipper’s heavy silver necklaces, bracelets and rings, which often featured embracing figures of lovers and could be set with semi-precious stones, were first shown at Brummel Gallery in South Yarra in 1958. But his ‘one-of-the-kind pieces which it takes a personality to wear’ were already in demand in the early 1950s and even exported to America – a visiting American jewellery agent commented that they were ‘unexcelled in the States’. Four decades later, when Skipper was presented with an Emeritus Award from the Australia Council for his lifelong contributions to the visual arts and craft, his old friend, the well-known broadcaster Phillip Adams, noted that:

‘…. in life, in art, in gold, in stone, he was and remains remarkable….as long as I remember, a Skipper ring has been de rigueur for those living within the gravitational pull of Montsalvat…’.

And yes, this of course included Adams.
By the early 1960s, Skipper with his irrepressible personality and, as one journalist put it, rip-roaring sense of humour, was so much part of the local scene that his possible departure for Italy prompted an article in the Women’s Weekly predicting that

‘If he really has gone, the residents of Eltham, Vic., will find life perceptively flatter. They will have to be consoled with the legends that cling to him like burrs’.

I recommend that you read this marvellous account in full, for a taste of Skipper’s contemporary bohemian image and aura.
Skipper was eventually to decline his Italian scholarship to accept the prestigious commission for six immense wrought-iron screens for Canberra University.

He had just completed bas-relief Stations of the Cross in bronze for the church of St Mary Immaculate in Ivanhoe. Many more commissions for sculpture and jewellery were to come Skipper’s way in the succeeding decades, his final creation being the bronze statue ‘Young Man Awakening’ for Eltham Cemetery. He died on 24 February, one of Australia’s most distinctive, creative and fondly-remembered artists of his generation. For Matcham Skippers’ obituary and photo see Craft Unbound .
The Powerhouse has several examples of his jewellery in its collection like this 1960s silver necklace.

87/684 Necklace, oxidised silver, Matcham Skipper, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 1966-1968 Collection: Powerhouse Museum

Meet the curator- Eva Czernis-Ryl

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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.

Paul Cocksedge- Fabergé of 21st century design?

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Photography by Sotha Bourn © Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved

Did you miss Paul Cocksedge’s talk at the Powerhouse Museum last Monday? If you did, and if you are interested in innovative and visually striking design with a touch of ‘magic’, I really recommend that you have a glimpse at his products and concepts. Variously referred to by critics as an artist-inventor, contemporary alchemist or design wizard, the multidisciplinary creations of this young London-based designer are truly awe-inspiring.

'Sapphire and Tonic' close up from the Blue Room‘Sapphire & Tonic’ close up from the Blue Room
Photography © Powerhouse Museum, all rights reserved

I first saw his work in 2004 in the Blue Room, an exhibition of the best works from the Bombay Sapphire design glass competition (then in its 4th year) which began its international tour at the Powerhouse, fresh from its launch at the Milan fair. Cocksedge’s intriguing light ‘Sapphire & Tonic’ displayed in its own dark room was a definite highlight – it glowed a most beautiful blue, but had no visible source of electricity. It was a UV light from a nearby source that released the blue hue from the work’s major ingredient: gin and tonic! Only 3 years from London’s Royal College of Art where he studied product design under Ron Arad, Cocksedge was already a winner of the 2003 Bombay Sapphire Prize for his energy-saving ‘NeOns’ filled with natural gas and powered by an electrical current. He was just nominated for the Design Museum’s Designer of the Year (2004) and had displayed his lights in exhibitions by Issey Miyake and that German lighting maestro Ingo Maurer.

NEONS‘NeOns’ by Paul Cocksedge
Image courtesy of Design Museum.org

Cocksedge’s fascination with everyday materials as conductors of electricity and his interest in the emotional side of lighting and design resulted in a range of unusual objects from a lamp that conveys the idea of light as ‘breath’, to another lamp that can be turned off by rubbing away a pencil line drawn on attached paper (graphite is an electrical conductor), to my favourite ‘Bulb’, a transparent glass vase with a metal rim and water: when a flower is placed in the vase, water becomes light – caused by electricity flow through it and up the flower stem. ‘Bulb’ makes me think of Fabergé’s exquisite gold and jade dandelion, and the Russian jeweller’s other dewy flowers in rock-crystal vases that ‘magically’ transported their lucky owners to summer gardens during long Russian winters.

bulb-1‘Bulb’ now produced for Flos under the name ‘Life 01′
Image courtesy of Inhabitat

Among the most recent concepts of the Paul Cocksedge Studio is a sensational umbrella replacement, ‘Rain it in’, that uses static electricity to make water bend away from objects or people, including bike riders. Fascinated by technology, Cocksedge seemlessly merges it with design, constantly pushing boundaries. He talks about design experiences and events rather than products. Not unlike Fabergé’s exquisitely crafted flowers and his famous surprise Easter eggs, his ideas and solutions instil a sense of wonder.

These days Cocksedge’s name appears in exhibitions alongside those of such design masters as Ron Arad, Tom Dixon and Zaha Hadid and he also has an impressive list of clients. When I asked him last week if there had been any decisive moments or breakthrough projects in his career that brought him to where he is now, he said he was “not there yet”. Well, it is only a matter of time! Do check out his work and judge for yourself.

Eva Czernis-Ryl
Curator, Decorative Arts and Design

Happy Birthday Wedgwood!

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Collection, Powerhouse Museum

Did you know that Josiah Wedgwood was born on 12th of July 1730? It was his birthday on Sunday so we thought that this would be a good opportunity to illustrate our fabulous ‘Venus in her chariot’ vase, a highlight of our significant Wedgwood collection. This striking piece was made about 1790 at Josiah’s famous ‘Etruria’ manufactory in a district of Stoke-on–Trent, Staffordshire, England, only a few years before his death in 1795. Below is also some background information relating to the vase and our collection.

Regarded as the greatest English potter of his century, Josiah Wedgwood set up his ‘Etruria’ factory in 1759. What marked his progress towards fast-growing success was a process of ceaseless technical and stylistic experimentation. He was tireless in developing new ceramic bodies and was responsible for introducing the neoclassical style into English ceramics.

Wedgwood’s most important contribution to ceramics was jasper which he introduced in 1775. A result of more than 3000 trials in the search for a ceramic material that would best fit the new style, jasper was a dense white stoneware ideal for his decorative objects inspired by the classical art of ancient Greece and Rome. Named after the gemstone of the same name, jasper was easy to mould and decorate and could be stained by metal oxides in many colours. It was blue jasper however, that soon became synonymous with the name Wedgwood.

Although Wedgwood employed talented artists to design many of his vases, the white jasper low- relief decoration applied to this example is based on designs by the French painter Charles Le Brun (1629-90). The vase is decorated with two scenes by Le Brun: one side features ‘Venus in her chariot drawn by swans’
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while the other shows ‘Cupids watering the swans’.
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Venus, the Roman goddess identified with the Greek Aphrodite, the goddess of love and fertility, was the subject of Wedgwood’s many figures and decorative reliefs applied to his vases and panels.

Wedgwood’s links with Australia go back to 1789 when Governor Arthur Phillip sent clay from Sydney Cove to the eminent English botanist Sir Joseph Banks who gave the clay to his friend Josiah Wedgwood. As a result, a special Sydney Cove Medallion was made from that sample of raw material. In the 19th century, Wedgwood products were displayed at the Sydney and Melbourne international exhibitions of 1879 and 1881 and also spectacular table services were produced with Australian wild flowers decorations.

The Museum has collected tableware and other objects designed and made at Wedgwood from 1890 – the first Wedgwood objects were acquired only ten years after the Museum was founded in 1880. When in 1988, the century-old collection of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences was re-sited at the new Powerhouse Museum, it’s already substantial holdings of Wedgwood ceramics were enriched with many important 18th century objects. This vase was acquired with funds donated by the Powerhouse Members Organisation in 1990. You can see it on display, among our other selected Wedgwood treasures, in ‘Inspired!’, the long-term decorative arts and design exhibition on level 3.

Eva Czernis-Ryl
Curator, Decorative arts & design