Zum Andenken an Hulda Lauterbach (a souvenir for Hilda Lauterbach)

Alma Loessel
Australia
1866 – 1952

Zum Andenken an Hulda Lauterbach (a souvenir for Hilda Lauterbach)
c 1890
human hair, wire, silk
Place made
Lobethal, South Australia
Medium
human hair, wire, silk
Dimensions
37.5 x 42.5 cm (including frame)
21.5 x 25.5 cm (image)
Credit line
Gift of Mary Maitland in memory of Hilda Morcom (nee Lauterbach) 1983
Accession number
8314A39A
Signature and date
embroidered below picture 'Zum Andenken an Hulda Lauterbach'
Media category
Assemblage
Collection area
Australian decorative arts and design

  • 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

     

  • Translating loosely as ‘a souvenir for Hilda Lauterbach’, this work of art is made almost entirely of human hair – golden, auburn and brunette. It was made in the late nineteenth century in the Lutheran village of Lobethal in the Adelaide Hills by Alma Loessel, a maker and educator who was born in the village in 1866. The daughter of a German-born Lutheran pastor and school teacher, Loessel made the hirsute bouquet for her young friend Eva Rosina Hilda (Hulda) Lauterbach, who was born in Woodside in 1884.


    While hair art has its origins as a votive art form – as a tribute to the departed and/or as a talisman for the living – this hair work was made for a young child and features a large silk ribbon, the type usually reserved for braids. Perhaps the bouquet includes the hair of both the maker and the former owner? The work showcases not only an array of hair colour but an impressive range of techniques, with delicate hair strands meticulously looped, knotted and curled to form petals, leaves and a large ornate butterfly. Rarely does the name of the maker survive in the case of art forms pejoratively considered to be decorative, amateur or ‘feminine’. This work is a rare instance of both the name of the maker and her female inspiration being remembered and celebrated.

     

    Lisa Slade, Assistant Director, Artistic Programs

  • [Book] AGSA 500.