My Most Interesting Thing: Rene Lalique Opalescent dish 'Trepied Sirene' - Water Nymph

1.) What is it?
Rene Lalique Opalescent dish 'Trepied Sirene' - Water Nymph

2.) Why have you chosen it?
It's very beautiful - simple yet elegant

3.) When did it first catch your eye?
The first time I saw it about 10 years ago

4.) If it was yours, what would you do with it?
It would be on display - pride of place, next to my small pin dish (also by Lalique - featuring the Water Nymph design).

5.) What stuff do you (or did you) collect?
I have a few Lalique pieces.  Hope to have more in due time!!!

Chosen by: Ilonka McInnes, Carrick Hill Volunteer

The Keeper's Random Ramblings - Gardening Implements

If only tools could talk

This week Richard Bird (The Old Mole) drove from his home in Armidale NSW to deliver the first consignment of gardening tools and implements (approx 400) from his collection that he is gifting to Carrick Hill.  This will be the foundation collection of the Australia's Gardening Museum to be opened at Carrick Hill in 2014.   As he unloaded them from his novel designer trailer (see photo) he had a story about the function of each object or the unusal circumstances in which he acquired it or its function.

The amazing and endlessly interesting Richard Bird 'The Old Mole' unloading the collection from his wonderfully unique trailer.

  The past history of a particular tool is often lost and all we have is the marvellous patina of use and time but the Mole has ways of knowing and has recorded the provenance when he has divined or learnt it over the past fifteen years.

My granddaughter Madeline surrounded by the Old Mole's amazing collection of gardening tools.

Madeline and myself discovering some of the more quirky tools in the collection!

Carrick Hill garden is the most popular reason for attracting visitors to our dramatic hillside site over looking the city on the plains and beyond to Gulf St Vincent.  Cliff Jacob, the Haywards head gardener for forty seven years clipped by hand the hedges that surround the formal garden for the duration of his employment.  He would have seen the cypress plants when they were first bedded in, and at their current four metre height when he retired in 1984.  The new young head gardener, appointed to prepare the garden for the official opening in 1986, was John Draper. He offered Cliff one of the new motor powered hedge trimmers, but Cliff declined saying it was "too noisey and that he preferred to use his faithful hedge shears and do it properly by hand", all 103 metres of it.

We still have some of the shears Cliff used with their razor sharp blades and they will soon be seen in the stables where one of the stalls displays the role of horses in the garden (Yes! pooh for the roses). 

Carrick Hill's garden was begun in the 1930s but war interrupted things especially building the house and the Haywards did not move in until 1944.  By this time the gardeners had been at work planting and nurturing the young trees and shrubs which gave form to the landscape scheme devised by Ursula Hayward.  All this work would have been carried out with the classic basic hand tools.  No whipper snippers, rotary hoes or ride-on mowers.  In homage to the efforts of the first gardeners at Carrick Hill and all gardeners in Australia we are going to tell the story of the tools that did the job in every garden.  Their evolution and design, quirky stories of some very weird equipment and garden ornaments such as Australia's very own tyre swans. [Oz Garden History Society  & Goergeous Garden exhibition at Unley Museum]

Whether hoe, rake, spade or fork all have story to tell but the more obscure implements are fascinating in their anonimity.

My Most Interesting Thing: Trestle Table in the Dining Room

1.) What is it?
Trestle Table in the Dining Room

2.) Why have you chosen it?
Because I have always liked old oak refectory style tables.

3.) When did it first catch your eye?
On my first visit to Carrick Hill

4.) If it was yours, what would you do with it?
Use it!

5.) What stuff do you (or did you) collect?
Pewter, perfume bottles, patch boxes, fruit wood/oak furniture, 18th/19th century caricatures

Chosen by: Jan Murray, Carrick Hill Guide

My Most Interesting Thing: Inlaid Box

1.) What is it?
Inlaid Box

2.) Why have you chosen it?
It has great charm and a certain simplicity.  A good 'domestic' piece.

3.) When did it first catch your eye?
20 years ago.

4.) If it was yours what would you do with it?
Have it on view in a chose spot.

5.) What stuff do you (or did you) collect?
Pictures, plates and silver

Chosen by: Charlotte Bright, Carrick Hill Guide

The Keeper's random ramblings - News of a lost painting.....

News of a lost painting........

This week a new exhibition opens at Carrick Hill: Russell Drysdale: the drawings.  Lou Klepac, the curator of the exhibition, gave a terrific talk to the volunteer guides on Drysdale and informed us all about the man behind the art  and the many influences that impacted on his life and work.  I got a bonus when Lou explained that the two drawings in the show from our collection relate to a painting once in the collection.  It was burnt in a fire that destroyed the library and several other paintings in the Hayward's collection including a William Dobell (portrait of Joshua Smith) and a Gainsborough sketch.

A Woman Yawning  by Drysdale was also destroyed but what I found out was that it had once been owned by Keith and Elisabeth Murdoch.  This kind of fact is held in the huge data bank of knowledge that a consumate curator like Lou Klepac has researched and accumulated. He knew the artist and has has studied most of the artist's known works.  In particular he has investigated Drysdale's use of drawing and how he used it to plan his paintings.  Lou has written about both the paintings and drawings of this important 20th Century artist who together with Sydney Nolan changed the way Australians saw and understood the interior of our country.  These two artists and later Arthur Boyd swept away the romanticism of Arthur Streeton and the other Australian impressionist and brought  the outback and the harshness of the interior into our psyche.

                      This drawing is all that remains as a record of the Hayward's painting A Woman Yawning lost in the 1958 fire.  It was sent to them together with a letter containg another sketch from Drysdale after he had moved to Boudi in NSW with his second wife Maisie, during the mid 1960s.

The ones that got away.......

The provenance of A Woman Yawning got me thinking about other works lost from the Hayward's collection including those given away to friends and family, those destroyed by fire and occasionally works sold through the auction houses.  The loss of major paintings like Portrait of Joshua Smith by William Dobell is major moment in Australian art history.  The Archibald prize winning painting went on to be contested in the courts questioning the artist's intention in depicting the subject.  Jane Hylton, Carrick Hill's collection adviser, explored the paintings and its demise as a burnt canvas in a book published by Wakefield Press in 2003 and still available in the Gift Shop as well as seven others in the monograph series which have accompanied Carrick Hill exhibitions.

Chris Orchard, artist and drawing master, was the special guest who opened the Drysdale Drawings exhibiton on April 5th.  He spoke of the insight that drawings give to the viewer, of how the artist was working out a composition or the exploring the material via the eye, mind and hand.

My Most Interesting Thing: The Willing Captive by John Dicksee

1.) What is it?
The Willing Captive by John Dicksee

2.) Why have you chosen it?
This work is ageless, the detail both in the sitter and the background is exquistie, and the story is open to interpretation by the viewer.

3.) When did it first catch your eye?
WHen I began my training as a volunteer guide

4.) If it was yours, what would you do wth it?
I would have it displayed in a prominent position to be enjoyed and view by everyone.

5.) What stuff do you (or did you) collect?
Hermes Silk Scarves

Chosen by: Wendy Laver, Carrick Hill Guide