Lot 235 A rare Royal Doulton ‘The Butterfly’ figure, designed by L. Harradine, circa 1925-1930 to be sold by Sotheby’s Australia, estimate $4,000 – $6,000
Grandma’s elegant cedar sideboard full of porcelain figurines and chotchkies may not be your idea of hip art, but with the popular rise of television programs such as Antiques Roadshow and a flourishing makers’ movement, these are exactly the objects that are again capturing the interest of collectors.
Geoffrey Smith, Chairman of Sotheby’s Australia told ArtsHub, ‘We are finding renewed vigour in collecting decorative arts and design across all areas.’
It was a feeling echoed by Matthew Martin, Curator International Decorative Arts & Antiquities at the National Gallery of Victoria (NGV).
‘There are many objects in our homes, or objects that we carry and wear, that can inspire and move us with beauty,’ he said.
Martin has recently curated the exhibition Eighteenth Century Porcelain Sculpture, which opened this week in Melbourne, while across town Sotheby’s Australia prepares to stage its Fine Asian, Australian & European Arts & Design Auction with 301 decorative art lots going under the hammer on 6 April.
Porcelain beyond the pretty
What is popular and what is rarified can be fluid concepts and are not always about negotiating “taste” or connoisseurship.
Martin reminded us that when the new medium of porcelain was mastered in the 18th century, it was the celebrated sculptors of the day – not the craftsmen – who were making these artworks.
‘These works were not merely “decorative”, but played important roles in the culture of spectacle, which characterised the Baroque courts of Europe…(but they were also) invested with rich symbolism that broadcast the power and the glory of the absolutist rulers who sponsored the new porcelain factories.’
Who’d have thought Granny’s kitsch dust-catcher once sat at the cutting-edge power-seat of art making!
Today artists such as Penny Byrne, Vipoo Srivilasa, Danie Mellor, Gerry Wedd, Stephen Bowers and Ah Xian turning to the porcelain medium to convey social-political commentary.
Martin’s exhibition invites audiences to see historic porcelain in the same light, as sculpture not just decoration.
‘Art is far more than simply painting and sculpture. That’s the point that the design reformers of the late nineteenth century, like William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, were trying to make – every product of human creative processes may be seen as art,’ he said.
‘Classical Modernism demonised the idea of ornament and the decorative. It idolised formalism and function; but that ignores the ability of decoration to possess a function, to communicate, to infuse an object with references and resonances.
‘The rise of a new respect for the artisanal object and the processes of making has, I think, opened many people’s eyes to the richness of meaning in a wide range of art objects from the past.’
Television and the marketplace
It is perhaps ironic that it is the broadcasting power of television – via Antiques Roadshow and an enormous list of similar shows internationally – that ushers audiences to renewed interest in the familiar decorative arts.
‘Antiques Roadshow is a conduit to inform and garner interest in Collectables and the Decorative Arts, which undoubtedly draws people to buy, sell and collect,’ said Smith.
Martin agrees the show ‘encourages people to look more closely at the objects in their homes than they might otherwise have done’ and reminds us that they ‘are in fact artworks, made by skilled artists and craftspeople’.
While many may see an opportunity for a quick dollar in selling what they find, this new lens also provides a new wave of collectors to the auction market.
Smith told ArtsHub: ‘Connoisseurs have always had a passion for ‘traditional’ decorative arts, (but) there is a new awakening and appreciation for fine craftsmanship and original design.
‘The (April) sale presents a myriad of possibilities to combine historic and contemporary arts and design and create a timeless aesthetic.’
Among the highlights is the 1899 Melbourne Cup Trophy (Lot 190), which captures that “object celebrity”, or what is more conservatively described as provenance in the auction world.
Going under the hammer in April is the 1899 Melbourne Cup Trophy; supplied courtesy Sotheby’s Australia
Estimated at $60,000-80,000, the silver tray service was won by Merriwee and has been held in the same private collection for over 80 years.
Smith said: ‘We have had a long history of selling racing memorabilia, including the 1867 Queens Plate and 1867 Melbourne Cup to the National Museum of Australia in October 2011 for $720,000’.
The auction house had success with the Collection of Dame Nellie Melba last year (31 March), given the provenance of the objects. The 162 lot sale grossed $1.98 million (including buyers premium) against estimates of $548,880 to $746,370.
Art Sales Digest called it ‘Beatlemania type excitement.’
Read: Buying fame, fashion or fancy? Melba’s collection auctioned
What these both demonstrate is the power of the narrative behind the objects, which is clearly in sync with a broader trend of storytelling across museums generally.
Among the story-heavy lots for Sotheby’s April auction is a colonial sideboard attributed to Rocke of Melbourne that was first acquired by Frank Rymill of Adelaide, who was a client of William Morris (circa 1898, Lot 195 estimate $3,000-4,000).
And 24 Indian silver plates by Barton of Bangalore, which were formerly in the collection of Nizam Barkat Ali Khan Mukarram Jah Asaf Jah VIII, purported to have been the richest man in India until the 1980s, who settled on a sheep farm outside of Perth in 1973 (Lot 288 estimate $7,000-12,000).
Chelsea Porcelain Factory, London (manufacturer); Joseph Willems (modeller), Pietà (c. 1761), Collection National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne; supplied
Shifting display strategies
Major mixed collections are facilitating increased attention for decorative arts. Institutions such as NGV and the Art Gallery of South Australia (AGSA) present paintings and sculpture alongside furniture, glass and textiles linked by themes, rethinking display strategies to highlight different and unexpected aspects of their decorative art collections, and eventually alter perceptions.
Australian galleries have long had significant decorative arts collections. Tony Ellwood, Director NGV, pointed out, ‘The NGV holds the largest collection of porcelain sculpture in Australia including the Chelsea Porcelain Factory’s large-scale Pietà sculpture of which the NGV owns two of the only three examples in the world.’
Provenance and notions of legacy sit strongly within the decorative arts, and with that private museums rise out of the eccentricities of collecting.
The David Roche House Museum – a new private museum dedicated exclusively to decorative arts, is due to open in Adelaide in June.
Read: Adelaide gets a new private museum
Curator of the new museum, Robert Reason told ArtsHub that Roche’s love for the decorative arts was developed not necessarily through reading, but auction catalogues, going to dealer galleries and talking directly to those people and then up-skilling as he went along.
You do get those eccentricities of a private collector because they have got the money, and they have a real area of interest which they develop over a long period of time.’
Smith said that undoubtedly the opening of the museum will ‘facilitate the education and enthusiasm for the decorative arts’.
Martin agreed that the Roche museum has the ‘potential to make a significant impact on Australian audiences’, and that the domestic setting – like Antiques Roadshow – makes the familiar and the dismissed “high-art kitsch” appreciated on a new level.Not dissimilar to the collection of David Roche are works coming under the hammer at Sotheby’s by another Adelaide collector, Igor Zorich.
Smith explained: ‘Born into a Russian military family in 1912, Igor Zorich migrated to Australia after the Second World War with only 10 shillings to his name.’
It is lesson to us all – it seems we are all able to be collectors. Martin said, ‘We can all too often associate art solely with the setting of the art museum. But prior to the nineteenth century, no art was created with the intention of it entering into public art museums. These were works which were intended to be lived with.’
Collectively – TV shows, better integrated galleries, and auctions – are having an impact on recalibrating how we think about decorative arts within a broader picture of making.
And within today’s throw-away society where the hand-made has a renewed appreciation, the underlying story is that it can be fun too.
Eighteenth Century Porcelain Sculpture
NGV International
27 February – December 2016
Fine Asian, Australian & European Arts & Design Auction
Sotheby’s Australia
Melbourne, 6 April
View catalogue.
