Armchair
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Australia
Armchair
c 1870
Australian red cedar (Toona ciliata), Australian blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon), bone
- Place made
- Terrinallum Station, Darlington, Victoria
- Medium
- Australian red cedar (Toona ciliata), Australian blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon), bone
- Dimensions
- 100.8 x 65.4 x 53.5 cm
- Credit line
- South Australian Government Grant 1989
- Accession number
- 898F11A
- Signature and date
- Not signed. Not dated.
- Media category
- Furniture
- Collection area
- Australian decorative arts and design
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The discovery of gold in Victoria in 1851 resulted in several waves of immigration to Australia in the second half of the nineteenth century, with many immigrants travelling to Victoria from across the globe in the pursuit of gold. In the 1850s, these gold seekers included around 42,000 Chinese migrants, large numbers of whom settled permanently in Australia, establishing a range of entrepreneurial businesses. The gold rush brought great economic prosperity to the colony of Victoria, and the furniture trade flourished, including that of Chinese cabinet-makers. Even so, many Chinese immigrants experienced hostility from furniture-makers of European ancestry, who were annoyed because they produced their work cheaply and therefore diverted trade from them, also accusing them of plagiarism.
This rare and intriguing armchair dates to the 1870s and is made of red cedar and blackwood, both Australian timbers. The chair, with a square form, has a box frame and squared arms and back, a style popular in China from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries. The chair features a distinctive Chinese style, including scrolls, bone inlay and carved motifs. It was probably made in Victoria by Chinese immigrants who originally came to the colony in search of gold and later worked as cabinet-makers. It was originally part of a set, the set including two cupboards in the same style.
Rebecca Evans, Curator of Decorative Arts & Design
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From the early 1980s, Stephen Bowers began to apply an elaborate and sumptuous style of surface decoration to ceramics, a style that makes use of the techniques of fine painting in combination with layers of coloured glazes and lustre. Originating from a wide range of sources, his imagery varies in content from subjects drawn from popular Australian culture and flora and fauna, to that directly referencing European art traditions, especially the porcelain decoration of the eighteenth century. He frequently juxtaposes unlikely combinations of images, and in Antipodean palaceware selects them from two main sources – European historic pattern design and Australian flora and fauna.
This large vase, one of a pair, was made by potter Mark Heidenreich in Sydney in 1989 using especially prepared clays. In 1994 Bowers finished decorating the first vase, now in the collection of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney. This second vase, decorated in 1998, features sulphur-crested cockatoos, scrolling vine with banksia seeds and eucalyptus leaves amongst a smorgasbord of cultural references drawn directly from the history of international ceramics.
Rebecca Evans, Curator of Decorative Arts & Design
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[Book] AGSA 500.