Magnificent show of Tilden’s jewelry

Craft / “Blanche Tilden – ripple impact: a 25-year survey”. At Canberra Museum & Gallery till February 12. Reviewed by MEREDITH HINCHLIFFE.

IN 1995 Blanche Tilden was awarded a Graduate Diploma of Artwork, Gold and Silversmithing from the Canberra College of Artwork, Australian Nationwide College.

This adopted an prolonged interval of formal schooling and sensible work with two main artists: Peter Minson, grasp flameworker and Susan Cohn from the jewelry and steel studio, Workshop 3000.

These experiences convey collectively glass and steel – the 2 supplies that Tilden makes use of to create her kinetic jewelry. Her jewelry is all the time articulated.

Tilden has lengthy been fascinated by the great thing about industrial processes and the supplies of recent structure. Take the acquainted type of a bicycle chain – she has used this as a mannequin for most of the necklaces, pendants, chains, and rings she creates. The simple motion of objects with shifting components are her start line.

This travelling exhibition, created by Geelong Gallery, reveals one in every of Tilden’s earliest works, and the latest: created in 2021.

Tilden embraced flamework, or lampwork, when she took up glass as a cloth, as the strategy of making the glass elements she wanted. This requires concentrated focus over a flame that softens, melts, after which reshapes glass tubes.

Utilizing principally darkish colors – generally tempered by a gold hyperlink, or clear glass – Tilden makes use of a restricted palette of metals: anodised aluminium, titanium, sterling silver and stainless-steel. This provides her physique of labor a exceptional cohesive and instantly identifiable high quality – which helps to create this excellent exhibition.

Tilden ceaselessly collaborates with different artists. From 2005 to 2008, Phoebe Porter undertook a mentorship with Tilden at Studio Haçienda in Melbourne. Collectively they labored on a undertaking titled “Normal Meeting”, one in every of Tilden’s few sorties into making brooches. Guests had been invited to pick out their very own elements to create a brooch.

In 2016 Tilden collaborated with Mary Featherston, spouse of the late Grant Featherston, a driving power in modern design-led manufacturing. Ms Featherston gifted Featherston’s archive to the Nationwide Gallery of Victoria. The archive included a group of glass jewelry and components made by Featherston within the ’40s. Tilden and Ms Featherston met and The Featherston x Tilden jewelry version is the results of their collaboration.

Tilden’s work is held by many Canberra collectors, and it is usually held in lots of public establishments in Australia.

The show itself is magnificent. Many of the work is proven on curved tables of various heights, some below clear acrylic domes. Pictures, exhibiting a number of the collectors carrying their works, are scattered all through the gallery. The care with which the exhibition has been developed, curated and displayed is a testomony to the standard of Tilden’s work.