Bizarre Ware, cachepot by Clarice Cliff, collection of Hawke's Bay Museums Trust, Ruawharo Tā-ū-rangi. Photo / Supplied
Bizarre Ware, cachepot by Clarice Cliff, collection of Hawke's Bay Museums Trust, Ruawharo Tā-ū-rangi. Photo / Supplied
At any given Art Deco Festival weekend, our Hawke's Bay Museum's Trust collection is a little stretched across all museum activities.
Festival talks, interactives, exhibitions and a general enthusiasm to see authentic examples of Art Deco style put considerable pressure on this aspect of our collection.
The Museum's Trust Art Deco collection is substantial and has a good range of domestic ware, including special personal items and fashion. We have pieces from renowned international pottery studios as well as design work by brilliant national exponents of Art Deco, Louis Hay and Florence MacKenzie.
The trust also holds the work of artists such as René Lalique, Joseph Lorenzi, Noam Slutzky and the brilliant Clarice Cliff.
While we are lucky to boost the quality of our collection, there are still significant gaps and a real need for more objects that add depth to the story of what we already have in store.
For this reason, the trust recently purchased this elegant Clarice Cliff cachepot (a decorative container for indoor plant pots) in one of Cliff's distinctive and uncommon patterns.
Art Deco period desk model of a plane. Photo / Supplied
With her usual exuberance, this moulded ceramic is hand painted with abstract shapes in bright colours, for a pattern she called "Persian". A part of her "Inspiration" range, the cachepot was produced around 1930.
Made at the height of her popularity, Cliff's Persian range has remained highly collectable.
For the Museum's Trust collection it represents a diversity of influences on what was to become known as Art Deco.
A truly global design movement - influences from the Americas, Africa, Asia, Europe and trans-continental Egypt - made for an eclectic set of graphic styles in the period. The collection will benefit from the extra depth this acquisition provides. To have such a quality piece of Islamic-influenced design is a real thrill.
Also purchased by the trust was a charming Art Deco period desk model of a plane. This attractive piece shows a reverence for things aeronautical at a time when flight was accessible to few, and in the imagination of many. Art Deco in particular celebrated the fast and new in the golden age of travel.
More than any period of design, Art Deco was expressed through luxury experiences. For those who are able to afford travel, Deco enhanced the experience of aeroplane, car and cruise ship journeys, their design adding a kind of surrealist boost to what was really in the late '30s, an elitist experience.
Still, and perhaps more interestingly, Art Deco of the 1930s and '40s also catered to the masses with an egalitarian ease not felt before. New materials and production methods, access to public venues such as cinemas, and the advent of mainstream magazine publications, meant Art Deco was a period of design that could be experienced by consumers with a lot less cash.
MTG Hawkes Bay is very pleased to have two more pieces in the Museum's Trust collection to share with you in the next festival.
