Modernist art glass: Italy & Australia.

When I was doing art history, Art consisted of painting, sculpture and architecture. Even illuminated manuscripts were studied for their paintings, not for their other art forms eg book binding, printing, wood cuts. And for students who wanted to write academic theses about silver art, ivories, treen, ceramics or textiles, there was always a desperate scramble to find top quality supervisors and examiners.

What changed that for me as a postgraduate was finding other art forms that were fascinating: a] silver art of my beloved Huguenots, b] birth of C18th porcelain in central Europe and c] arrival of art glass in Australia. Art glass, for the purposes of this post, is an object of hand blown glass, designed in the first instance for decorative purposes. 

Sommerso/sunken glass is an art glass from the Italian island of Murano in the late 1930s with two or more layers of contrasting colours. These layers are formed by dipping the object in molten glass; the outermost layer is typically clear. Sommerso was developed during in the inter-war era and its sharp lines and minimal decoration quickly became a popular technique for vases. There is something about the crispness and lack of applied decorative elements on top of Murano that might remind the reader of the Gordon Studio art glass in Victoria.

Gordon, Burnt Earth Bottles,  2010, 
up to 50 cm high

Sommerso glass stem vase, Italy

20th Century Glass

The Scottish duo Alasdair and Rish Gordon graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1957, then moved to Hadelands Glass Works in Norway. The two artists soon established an engraving workshop in Bergen. Using full lead crystal blanks blown by Hadelands, they started using sandblast in their sculptures, and were there for the beginning of studio glass.

In 1973, Alasdair and Rish returned to Scotland, establishing a studio with Strathearn Glass Company. They would have stayed in Scotland, had it not been for the invitation to participate in Western Australia’s 150th Anniversary Celebrations in 1979. The family decided to emigrate to Australia, and as soon as possible they established The Gordon Studio in Fremantle, a port suburb of Perth.

Their daughter Eileen Gordon was born in Norway and was trained in England, then emigrated to Australia in 1980 with her parents. After a decade of working in glass studios here and abroad, Eileen established the her own studio in 1990. I had seen a lot of the Gordon studio’s loveliest pieces in a retail outlet in Melbourne, but had never seen their gallery and studio in semi-rural Mornington Peninsula.

Gordon, Centrifugal Platter, 2007, 
52cm diameter

Melbourne-born Grant Donaldson, Eileen’s husband, was not born into a glass art family. He left the land and started his career in glass in 1990, assisting his wife in this modern art medium. By 1994 the midlife career change was complete - he sold his farm and relocated Gordon Studio Glassblowers to the beachside resort town of Rosebud. Once Grant was working full time on his own glass art, he too became recognised as an innovative glass blower. Now they are in Red Hill, not far from Rosebud.

Naturally some pieces were more attractive to me than others. I did not particularly like the glass flowers mounted on removable stainless steel rods for planting in the garden; nor the mushrooms, cactus plants or bulrushes. Even the tiny Kaleidoscope Bottles seemed too small and decorated to be truly modern. But the large bottles, vases, platters & dishes are sublime: strong colours, sleek shapes and uncluttered by decorative add-ons. Had I found the centrifugal platters in the middle of Finland or Cuba, I still would have guessed that the colours and shapes were purely Australian. There is something special about the landscapes and seascapes of the Mornington Peninsula, its soils, trees and sunsets.

Donaldson, Jelly Bottles,  2010, 
68cm high

Perhaps the Gordon studio's most prestigious international exposure each year was at the Munich International Craft Fair in Germany, 1999-2000. In Australia the biggest success for the company was at the National Art Glass Gallery in Wagga Wagga. But for children visiting the studio, the highlight was watching the molten glass get coloured, moulded, patted with timber paddles and fired, endlessly.

 

Fryerstown Vic: historic gold town

Never heard of Fryerstown in Victoria, just a 10-minute drive south from Castlemaine? Neither had I. Yet the locals say this now-tiny town was once home to 15,000 people during the 1850s gold rush, with hundreds of homes, 30 hotels and an endless supply of freshly brewed beers! It must have been a hopping and jumping place; especially in the early days the town was full of hustlers, drinkers and men wanting to cash in on the gold finds, sometimes violently. The Traveller's Guide to the Goldfields  says that the gold nuggets picked up in this area were particularly valuable.

Fryerstown courthouse 

The good folk of Fryerstown needed community facilities built locally, so that the citizens would not have to travel to the next big town every day. The Fryerstown National School opened in Feb 1853 in a tent at the Commissioners Camp at Golden Gully with 27 pupils. By 1865 loc­als decided that a proper new schoolhouse was needed and in July 1866 a new building was erected. Fryerstown State School No 252 was probably never very beautiful but in the late 1860s the school enrol­ment was 450 pupils, so this building was very im­portant to the Fryerstown community. By 1874 the Education Department had to build additional rooms. The school served the town well until 1967 when it closed for lack of interest; the last 3 students were relocated.

Fryerstown School
MelbournePlaygrounds

A Post Office was opened in 1854, a courthouse and police lockup were built in 1880. The court was later converted into a private residence, but we can guess from photos what it looked like back then - ornate bluestone foundations, baltic pine timber, pressed metal ceiling, slate roofing, cruciform shape, cathedral ceilings and leadlight windows.

By the late 1850s, surface gold in the area was beginning to diminish, so if gold mining was to continue, they would need larger companies to raise finance. From Britain. Richard Luke Kitto was a Cornish immigrant, engineer and surveyor who arrived in 1856, and started mining. He was appointed the Mining Registrar at Fryer's Creek in 1860. Kitto obtained the lease of the Duke of Cornwall Quartz Mining Company, to raise capital to dig out the deepest gold. In 1867 he sailed to England to raise the capital required, forming the Australian United Gold Mining Company in 1868. It may not have been the greatest of successes, financially speaking, but the Duke of Cornwall Mine still stands.

The Methodist Goldfields Chapel church was built in 1861 when gold prospectors were flooding into the area. The stone building was used as a church until 1971 when it was sold and turned into a holiday retreat.

Perhaps the nicest facility arrived when the local inhabitants of Fryerstown decided to build a memorial to show their sorrow for the fate of the explorers who had sacrificed their lives in crossing the continent. The doomed explorers, Burke and Wills, both died in June 1861, so it was amazing that the money was raised by the end of that year! There was actually an outpouring of grief for these heroic men across the state. By 1862 monuments had been erected in Back Creek Cemetery Bendigo, on the hill overlooking Castle­maine, in Beechworth and of course Fryerstown. Then Ballarat erected their Explorer's Fountain.

Mechanics Institute, 

named in honour of Burke and Wills

Victorian Places

The foundation stone for the small brick place was laid in mid 1863 and the Mechanics Institute was completed four months later. The Mount Alexander Mail reported on the successful opening ceremony of the Mechanics Institute Hall in front of 160 honoured guests. The Fryers Town Band played a selection of airs that enlivened the whole proceedings, as did speeches about the importance of knowledge, and having the means of reading and learn­ing available to people. Other rural Mechanics Institutes were certainly the intellectual and literary centre of those towns, but in Fryerstown it was the social centre as well.

The Burke and Wills Mechanics Institute in Fryerstown celebrated its 150th anniversary in Aug 2013. To celebrate, Hall Trustees invited past and present locals to a modern equivalent of the opening event. Teas, music and speeches!

Duke of Cornwall Mine

Dreamstime

And there are still some other Fryerstown sites of great interest to the history buff. The state school had to be restored in 2011 as part of a service for tourists i.e to improve accessibility to the Gold­fields Track, a walking & mountain bike track connecting Ballarat and Bendigo via small towns in between. And to provide support for the Victorian Goldfields World Heritage Bid that was largely focused on Castle­maine’s Diggings National Heritage Park.

These days the Fryerstown Hall is best known for its annual an­t­ique fair every Australia Day long weekend, attracting a nation­wide commitment by stall holders and thousands of visitors. It is an old building which requires maintenance and that is why the fair, which is a huge undertaking for a small town, is run each January. The fair will ensure that the hall is kept going and maintained for future generat­ions. First held in 1975, the Fair is one of the largest in Australia. And the recently refurbished old Fryerstown School was also opened for inspection.

Goldfields Chapel, opened for services in 1861

Riparide

Chocolate lovers: visit Malta

I loved holidaying in Malta but now I know there was much more to learn.

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Malta Chocolate Factory

Built by the Knights of St John in the mid-C16th on the centrally located Mediterranean island of Malta, Valletta quickly became a very important and cosmopolitan harbour city, and a perfect place through which foreign culinary practices and new exciting ingredients would have been able to enter the island. And, through the influence and strong links that the multi-national Knights enjoyed with overseas regions, some ingredients were able to come into Malta relatively earlier when compared to other parts of Europe. One example of this was chocolate. Malta was among the pioneering countries to have introduced the drinking of chocolate in Europe. Originating in Mexico, cocoa beans were introduced into Malta by the Spanish knights.

Born in Valletta Francesco Buonamico was a medical doctor, but as was usual for clever men, he was also a specialist botanist, antiquarian, linguist, scientist, poet, writer and theologian, a post-Renaissance genius. Buonamico was best known for his travelogues, written over a decade that he spent visiting 70 cities across Europe. While studying in France in the mid-1600s, Francesco Buonamico wrote the Trattato della Cioccolata, claiming that the island could boast of having been a forerunner in the coffee and chocolate drinking crazes that swept Europe in the C17th.  Buonamico wrote extensively and is best known for his travelogue, written in a decade that he spent visiting 70 cities all over Europe.

It was while studying in France, aged 19, that he wrote what was seen as one of the earliest treatises on chocolate. In his 8-page manuscript, Buonamic claimed that South American Indians resorted to chocolate drinking because they had no wine; so chocolate was clearly a drink then. The treatise provided a drinking chocolate recipe that included orange peel, spices, nuts and aniseed. In Malta, cocoa beans were used as the main ingredient for cold drinks and even ice creams. By late 1700s, Maltese chocolate wrapping paper started to be printed, indicating that by then chocolate was being consumed also as a solid. We also know that in Malta, cocoa beans were used as the principal ingredient for the preparation of a cold drink, granita, sorbet and icecream. 

But despite its limited market, it continued to attract the attention of scientists interested in discussing its nutritional benefits. It was still recognised as a precious treat, one that was given to dignitaries visiting Malta.  Grand Master Pinto gave chocolate as a reward to a group of men who infiltrated a network of organised smuggling from the Order’s bakery. Grand Master de Rohan had a personal chocolatier who worked at the palace, while a number of Inquisitors of Malta are also known to have treated their high-ranking guests with this luxury. In 1798 the Inquisitor’s Palace listed copper chocolate pots and other specialised equipment, just to meet the Inquisitor’s cravings!

Maltesers are a British confectionery product made by Mars Inc, first sold in UK in 1937. Originally described as energy balls and aimed at women, Maltesers consisted of a spheroid malted milk centre surrounded by milk chocolate. Their first logo was The chocolates with the less fattening centre. Ads claimed Maltesers malted milk centre was 1/7 as fattening as ordinary chocolate centres, leading marketers to value it for weight loss. In a later poll, they were the most popular sweet in the UK. They have since been sold in Europe, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, U.S and Middle East. In Australia, Mars signed up with MacRobertson's in 1954 which bloggers will remember if they were at school in the mid 1950s. Only in Jan 2017 did Maltesers officially became available in U.S. In fact the factory in Ontario, Canada produces 80% of its Maltesers for the U.S market.

Chocolate coconut balls

Credit: I love Maltese food

 

Due to its expensive market value and exotic nature, chocolate was primarily consumed by the nobility, but despite its limited market, it continued to attract the attention of scientists interested in discussing its nutritional benefits, if any existed. It was still recognised as a precious treat, one that was offered to dignitaries visiting Malta. Grand Master Pinto presented chocolate as a reward to a group of men who infiltrated a network of organised smuggling from the Order’s bakery. Grand Master de Rohan had a personal chocolatier who worked at the palace, while a number of Inquisitors of Malta are also known to have treated their high-ranking guests with this luxury. In 1798 the Inquisitor’s Palace listed copper chocolate pots and other specialised equipment, just for the Inquisitor’s cravings!

Few Maltese salt pans/salini remain today. This chocolate bar comes from the timeless, age-old craft of salt farmers, who have harvested salt traditionally for 400+ years. Hand harvested sea salt from the Salt Pans is lightly sprinkled over Dark Chocolate. Its delicate texture and gentle saltiness bring out the complexities of the dark chocolate blend.

Taste traditional Gbejniet cheese in Gozo; delicious, round white cheese made from sheep’s or goat’s milk, dried in ventilated boxes and later spiced in wine vinegar & topped with crushed pepper. Taking inspiration from the obsession with cheese, embraced goats’ milk to create an alternative to milk chocolate. Peppered cheese chocolate is grassy, creamy, fresh and slightly sour.

tasting tables and drinking area

Malta Chocolate Factory

At the Malta Chocolate Factory, look through the kitchen viewing window into the factory to see artisanal chocolates being handmade. Adults then sit tasting wine, beer, cocktail and chocolate pairings.

Each important Maltese holiday has a special chocolate item that families always buy or make. Before Lent, the Maltese celebrate Carnival with prinjolata, a traditional cake made with sponge, almonds, cherries, pistachios and chocolate. Feast of St Joseph is connected to fried choux pastry balls, filled with sweet ricotta and topped with chocolate. Christmas Eve is celebrated with hot, spiced cocoa drink with chestnuts, orange rind, cinnamon, nutmeg and cloves.

For exotic, savoury tastes, see the Authentic Maltese Chocolate Collection, 6 unique chocolate bars made with local flavours. Combining Maltese ingredients the endemic Bidni olives and Sea Salt. The cultivar known as Bidni is endemic to Malta but, until a few years ago, it was rare and virtually unknown. Taste the strong, peppery, melt in this true artisan/handmade product. 

Few Maltese salt pans/salini remain today. This chocolate bar comes from the timeless, age-old craft of salt farmers, who have harvested salt traditionally for 400+ years. Hand harvested sea salt from the Salt Pans is lightly sprinkled over Dark Chocolate. Its delicate texture and gentle saltiness bring out the complexities of the dark chocolate blend.

Malta artisan wine pairing

Power Traveller

Elf Hamper 2024

Malta Gift Service

Janis Fink Ian: what a folk singer!

Janis Fink (1951-) was born and grew up on a New Jersey farm,  raised by her Jewish parents; dad Victor taught music, inspiring her early interest in the piano, which she began studying at 2. Then she learned to play acoustic guitar and harmonica. Mum Pearl worked in an eduational career, and in that Cold War era, both parents were often under FBI surveillance because of their progressive politics.

She attended New York City High School of Music & Art, performing at school functions and at local New York folk clubs. But she dropped out school following the release of problem musical pieces.

Young Janis admired the work of folk pioneers such as Joan Baez and Odetta. Her youth included a diverse range of singers and musicians who were popular between the 1930s and 1960s, among them American blues-folk singer French singer and actress Edith Piaf, and American jazz singer Billie Holiday. At 12, Janis wrote her first song, Hair of Spun Gold, which was later published in a folk publication Broadside then recorded for her debut album. She legally changed her name to Janis Ian in 1964, taking her brother Eric's middle name as her new surname.

Janice Ian (centre), Bruce Springsteen (left) and Billy Joel (right)

Janis’ concert in Philadelphia in 1974

miamiartzine

In that same year, perhaps coincidentally, Janis wrote and sang her first hit single, Society’s Child, about an interracial romance forbidden by a girl’s mother and rubbished by her school colleagues. The girl decided to end the relationship, believing the social morals then had given her no other choice. Produced by George Morton and released thrice between 1965-7,  the song was rejected by 22 record labels for being too provocative, it was finally released by Verve.  

Society's Child was bittersweet commentary on adolescent cruelty, illusion of popularity and teenage angst, as reflected upon from the perspective of a 24-year-old. Note that the lyrics were totally intolerable for some radio stations, and they withdrew it from their playlists. Disc jockeys across the country were reluctant to play the song until Ian performed it on a Leonard Bernstein television special and became an instant celebrity. Even then in the midst of the Civil Rights movement, the subject ignited an explosive response and the adolescent was targeted with hate mail, death threats, booing and heckling and she reported that a radio station in Atlanta that played it was burned down. Nonetheless Janis Ian climbed the charts and embarked on a national tour. And in mid 1967, Society’s Child did very well, reaching #14 on the Billboard Hot 100 music chart. 

With Verve, she subsequently recorded three other albums, For All the Seasons of Your Mind (1967); Secret Life of J. Eddy Fink (1968), and Who Really Cares (1969). 

 It reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #1 on the Adult Contemporary chart, and won the 1975 Grammy Award for Best Female Pop Vocal. 

Her next album, Between the Lines (1975), went platinum and the album reached number one on Billboard’s Album chart. It was quickly certified gold, and later earned a platinum certification for sales of 1,000,000+ copies sold in the U.S.  In 1976 she won her first Grammy Award, for best female pop vocal performance, for the song. 

Janise finally became one of the first Indie artists, resurfacing in 1993. Although Janis never regained her early stardom, she continued writing and performing and after 12 years without a major release, she returned to the music scene with the Grammy-nominated, folk-inspired Breaking Silence (1993).  She had to mortgage her house to record Breaking Silence, which discussed incest, abuse and the Holocaust. Defying all expectations, the album became a critical and commercial success.  She returned to recording an album every couple of years while collaborating with other artists, also writing science fiction and has published some short stories.  She also came out as gay then. 

Following the success of the single Fly Too High, from the album Night Rains (1979), it was popular in Australia and the Netherlands and was a #1 hit in South Africa.  But Janis experienced various ups and downs, professionally and personally. In 1978 she married Portuguese filmmaker Tino Sargo  but the two divorced in 1983. When her record contract expired in the early 1980s, she had trouble finding a new label because of her risky songs and declining popularity. She decided to relocate to Nashville, where she carved out a niche writing songs for other artists, including Bette Midler, Amy Grant and John Mellencamp. 

Janis won a Grammy in 1975 for At Seventeen, her second song to do so. This was a stark, intimate, heartstring-tugging first-person account of the realities of life for teenage ugly duckling girls which brought her new fans around the world. Listen to  At Seventeen (1976) on youtube.

    Janis Ian, Judy Collins and Leonard Cohen, 1974

Irish Independent

Her popularity maximised in the late 1970s, with musical guest appearances on Saturday Night Live and further Grammy nominations. After breaking her recording contract with CBS in 1982, she spent a decade away from the spotlight, during which she suffered personal and financial setbacks, particularly after industry insiders declared her unmarketable because she was gay. Despite her widespread publicity and early success when she was touted as the female Bob Dylan, Janis became disillusioned with the music industry and briefly withdrew from the music scene after Who Really Cares' release. Her return to recording in the early 1970s was slow, yielding several unremarkable albums. In 1974, however, she finally had another success, with Stars, produced with Columbia Records. The album featured the hit song Jesse, written by Janis and made famous the previous year by rhythm-and-blues singer Roberta Flack. 

Her 1995 album, Revenge, mixed jazz and samba. Her later albums include God & the FBI (2000), Billie’s Bones (2004) and Folk Is the New Black (2006) in which she did her own songwriting. She released the book Society’s Child: An Autobiography in 2008; in 2012 she released an audio recording of the book, winning a 2013 Grammy Award for best spoken word album.

In 2003 her Toronto wedding to Patricia Snyder was the first gay marriage noted in the New York Times Vows section. As of 2023 she has released 23 albums, with 2022’s The Light at the End of the Line billed as her final. Most of her final tour of 2022 was cancelled due to vocal scarring that had left her unable t sing. The Janis Ian Archives at Berea College, which Ian donated, was opened in Oct 2024.

Pop-Folk songstress Janis Ian has sustained a long career, but is best known for two hits that established her as a writer unafraid to take on weighty subjects. The first was Society’s Child, a controversial 1965 song re interracial teen romance that was a hit when Janis was 15. And Breaking Silence about incest.