What jogs the mind to seek things for the eye?

Well - Adelaide Writers’ Week is on with a vengeance here in Adelaide and earlier in the week two authors with an interest in the 1930s came to visit Carrick Hill.  Both fascinating and knowledgeable people, both British: Selina Hastings is a biographer of literary figures such as Somerset Maugham and Nancy Mitford; and Paul French writes on China both fiction and non-fiction.

I love taking people through the house as I am able to see the place through their eyes and thereby adjust my perception of the meaning and significance of the collection.  Both writers were delighted with the British modernist artists and became so absorbed in the Stanley Spencers', Augustus Johns', Derwent Lees' and Jacob Epsteins' that I forgot to quiz Paul on his China tastes.

 We did have a brief moment on Chinoiserie when we came to the lacquered cabinet in the drawing room (created in England in the 1820s), but I realised too late that Paul might have much more to tell.  His talk on the story behind the detective story of Midnight in Peking (Bejing) and observations on Shanghai (where he lives and works as  Market Strategist)were intriguing.  So on returning to my desk that afternoon I thought I’d check just how many references to China our Mosaic Collections program would throw up as I could not think of a single object from China – it was 26.  These included books, furniture and ceramics.

The most outstanding item is a turquoise glazed pottery jardiniere (30cm high with 54cm diameter) modelled with good luck symbols and sat on a gilded wooden stand.  I believe it’s a fish bowl, but that is only my conjecture, as I can see the golden shapes swimming round.  When I first arrived I had it filled with water and floated camellia flowers in it after the annual Camellia Show held at Carrick Hill each August left us with blooms to die for.  However it leaked and therefore only orchids are occasionally displayed in it now.  It is a glorious object, only roughly dated in the catalogue 17^th/18^th century so much more work required as there are no provenance details on record.