Gold Australian animal sculptures
Two gold sculptures featuring Australian animals expertly cast in Sydney bySimon Adrien Schagen (1923–2013)were offered by West Sussex auctioneersToovey’s on 8 August 2024.
Christine Erratt
More light on colonial silversmith Alexander Dick
This article presents new information and some speculation relating to the prominent Sydney colonial silversmith Alexander Dick, whose works are found in many Australian public and private collections.
Early Sydney silver flatware
Four early Australian silver flatware items – two spoons and two forks – engraved with the three initials ‘WEB’ present a challenge warranting research. Whose engraved initials (WEB) are they and when were the items made and engraved? Christine Erratt offers an answer. Four flatware1items with the owners’ initials WEB, held in two private collections (plates 1–6), bear the punch marks of Sydney silversmith Alexander Dick (1799-1843), whose shop operated in Sydney from soon after his arrival in 1824 until 1846. His widow Charlotte closed the business in 1846, with Samuel Lyons auctioning the remaining stockon 20–21 April; on 12 December she married music shop owner Francis Ellard.
1950s souvenir jewellery and art with Indigenous motifs
Finding more examples of the silver brooch with Indigenous motifs that she discussed in our May issue, Christine Erratt delved further into their history. In the National Archives of Australia, Christine uncovered the 1954 design registration applications.
Six different designs, of which five were inspired by scenes illustrated in the 1952 edition of the Australian Museum publication Aboriginal Decorative Art, had been registered by Eugene John Adler, a post-war Hungarian immigrant and Sydney manufacturing jeweller. These brooches were part of a trend in the 1950s to create souvenirs and art inspired by distinctive Indigenous designs.
Indigenous motifs on a silver brooch
We often recognise Australiana by the presence of motifs depicting Australia’s unique flora and fauna and, especially in the 19th century, representations of Indigenous figures. Anthropologists studied Indigenous people, while the things they made – much of it, what we would describe today as art – were regarded as artefacts of ethnological interest. Non-Indigenous artists sometimes adopted Indigenous motifs freely in works on paper, ceramics or fabric. It is rare however to have a non- Indigenous craftsman adapt Indigenous motifs in precious metal. Christine Erratt pursued the story behind a silver brooch with Indigenous motifs.
Australian flora and fauna on silver spoons 1971–2021
The late Professor Kenneth Cavill’s article published in Australiana1 identified about 50 spoons of Australian and British manufacture, marking royal and other occasions, with heraldic motifs, maps of Australia or Tasmania and flora and fauna, made either in factories or in craft workshops. Overlapping almost half the years in Cavill’s survey, this article looks at the last 50 years of silver spoon making in Australia, especially decoration using Australian flora and fauna. Silver commemorative spoons and silver plated (EPNS) spoons are omitted.
Making a new mace for the Australian Catholic University
How things are designed and made should interest all those with a passion for the creative arts. One of our members, Christine Erratt, was involved in the process of designing a new mace for the Australian Catholic University because of the important articles she wrote for Australiana, and another member, W.J. Sanders Pty Ltd, was commissioned to make it. Like many pieces of historic Australian art, the design of the mace combines a number of motifs, several representing Australian natural history subjects, to symbolise the University’s origins and campuses.
Book review: Eva Czernis-Ryl, ‘Hendrik Forster Silversmith Designer Maker’
During the second decade of the new millennium, many pioneers of the crafts movement in Australia, which began to flourish in the 1970s, will celebrate four decades of working in studio practices with their chosen materials.
Backchat
On 1 January 2014, the University of Ballarat and the Gippsland campus of Monash University amalgamated to form Federation University Australia. The ceremonial mace formerly used at the University of Ballarat is currently in use as the ceremonial mace for the new university... It was not John [Joseph] Thomas Hamblin who was in the Hamblin & Son business 1888–96 (p 9; mea culpa– Ed.) The sons in the business at that time were Henry and Arthur.
Gold Australian animal sculptures
Gold Australian animal sculptures
More light on colonial silversmith Alexander Dick
More light on colonial silversmith Alexander Dick
Early Sydney silver flatware
Early Sydney silver flatware
1950s souvenir jewellery and art with Indigenous motifs
1950s souvenir jewellery and art with Indigenous motifs
Indigenous motifs on a silver brooch
Indigenous motifs on a silver brooch
Australian flora and fauna on silver spoons 1971–2021
Australian flora and fauna on silver spoons 1971–2021
Making a new mace for the Australian Catholic University
Making a new mace for the Australian Catholic University
Book review: Eva Czernis-Ryl, ‘Hendrik Forster Silversmith Designer Maker’
Book review: Eva Czernis-Ryl, ‘Hendrik Forster Silversmith Designer Maker’
Backchat
Backchat
Ceremonial maces of Australian universities, part 3
Ceremonial maces of Australian universities, part 3