Fine art and function collide in show
AHAND-PAINTED “Grand Tour” chickenskin fan, a large Cantonese vase rescued from a house fire, antique Italian furniture, Venetian glassware, silverware and ceramics old and new . . .
These are all among a glorious smorgasbord of decorative artworks on show at the Sarjeant Gallery.
The exhibition, Ms Taylor-Moore said.
Lethenty, a neo-Georgian style house, is still a family residence and was inherited by the late Hilary Haylock from her maiden aunts Jean and Nancy Wilson.
The Totarapuka homestead was built by Scottish settlers Andrew Duncan and his wife Margaret, who arrived in Whanganui in 1841.
It became a coach stop for horsedrawn carriages passing through Whanganui in the 19th century.
The house was sold in 1972 and in 2008 the granddaughter, Josephine Duncan, bequeathed her personal effects and inherited objects to the Whanganui Regional Museum.
Lethenty owners and the museum have generously lent items for the exhibition.
The back stories to some of the pieces are fascinating.
The hand-painted fan, one of three displayed, is not actually chicken skin but rather a fine vellum, giving a plucked feather effect. The follicle pattern was achieved by pressing seeds into cleaned, wet, untanned skins, sourced from very young sheep, goats and cattle. The skins were put under pressure and left to dry, then the seeds were brushed away, leaving an imprint. The thin, delicate skins were more durable than silk and didn’t bleed when painted.
The Cantonese vase is one of a pair that Jean Wilson rolled out of the fire, which destroyed the original Lethenty house in 1914. A new house was built in 1915.
A cut-glass decanter from Lethenty displayed beside a contemporary item from the Sarjeant collection shows how the designs of previously functional and decorative objects have influenced works now considered to be fine art objects in their own right.
Two bowl forms by Whanganui ceramicist Rick Rudd “make a beautiful homage to their functional origins but are not useful”.
A huge teapot and a jug by local potter Ross Mitchell-Anyon are, however, beautiful and fully functional.
“The exhibition shows the links and the blurring of distinction between the decorative and fine arts.”
The main exhibition will show in the i-Site gallery from January 21, while more environmentally sensitive items such as furniture will be displayed from January 25 at 38 Taupo Quay.
“The i-Site gallery is flooded with natural light and there’s no temperature control so we had to choose objects that would not be affected by these environmental conditions.
“At the moment, our exhibition space is quite limited compared to what will be available when we return to Queen’s Park. Once those [environmental] issues aren’t in the way we will have far more freedom to exhibit a greater breadth of the collection.”