Monthly Archive for April, 2009

This week has been busy – and it’s only Wednesday. Tuesday saw a visit from two Enmore Design School jewellery students, Kate Davey and Minh Tran. Both are in their last year and are researching a major topic for final assessment. Kate’s is openwork jewellery with an emphasis on the Byzantine-Etruscan era; Minh is researching two contemporary Australian metalsmiths, Joung-Mee Do and Helen Aitken-Kuhnen.
Kate and Minh intend working with precious metals in their chosen careers.

And on Tuesday afternoon, Carole Gilchrist from Adelaide University came in to research the architectural history of the present Powerhouse Museum. Carole is completing her Masters degree in Curatorial and Museum Studies at Adelaide University and for this final research project is focusing on museum architecture and its influence on the way objects are displayed. Her two case study museums are the Powerhouse Museum and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris.

Curator Dr Paul Donnelly is writing an article for The Asian Arts Society of Australia (TAASA) about Iznik tiles, using one (A9636-6) from the Museum’s collection as a focus. This tile dates from about 1560 AD, the time of Suleman the Magnificent, and Paul has been consulting a range of publications about Ottoman architecture and artefacts in order to narrow down a range of buildings from which this tile may have come.

Iznik earthenware tiles, produced in 16th and 17th century Turkey were painted with stylized and symmetrical designs of flowers, leaves and fruits. Colours were blue, white, turquoise, shades of green and purple. But their most distinctive feature was the use of a deep orange-red colour (sometimes know as ‘sealing wax’ red). These beautiful tiles tiles adorned walls of public buildings including mausoleums and mosques.

During his research Paul has identified a pattern that matches the Museum’s tile. He has also made a discovery – in comparing the patterns, it’s clear that the Museum’s tile has been cut on two sides of one corner, which suggests that either it was cut to fit an architectural scheme, or was damaged on removal and the broken edges tidied up. Thanks to an interlibrary loan, we know for the first time that the tile was cut, and can see from the illustration how the original tile would have appeared when complete.