Fifties fixation

Mary Curtis. Photo / Sarah Ivey

New Zealand's oldest contemporary jewellery gallery, Fingers, is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year, with a special group exhibition showcasing the creme de la creme of New Zealand's contemporary jewellery scene.

The show runs till the end of the month, and more than 30 jewellery artists are presenting new work, including Mary Curtis, who has made a selection of bold jewellery and brooches for the special show.

Curtis, who also teaches jewellery at the Manukau School of Visual Arts at MIT, has been making jewellery for 23 years, exhibiting here and overseas, and has work held in collections at the Auckland Museum and Dowse Art Museum in Lower Hutt.

Her work is "an exploration and celebration of the decorative possibilities found in the everyday. I treat the decorative materials I find interesting, such as fabric and wallpaper, as gemstones and make intricate and elaborate precious settings to house the forms I make from these materials".

She talks us through some of her favourite things.

1. Swan shaped measuring cups

I am not sure what era they are from but the age of the plastic and the style suggest around the 1950s. A good friend who knows my passions well found them in a second-hand shop and gave them to me as a birthday present. They fly across the bench with their backs filled with the ingredients I need - I love cooking with them.

2. My collection of dinner plates

I find it difficult to go past a second-hand shop without stopping to have a browse, and my first stop is always the kitchen section. Trade Me doesn't do it for me; I like the hunt and the joy of discovery as you fossick through the chaos and piles. I have been collecting dinner plates for about 15 years, mostly Crown Lynn and mostly from the 1950/60s.

Every dinnertime I have fun choosing what combination of plates to use.

3. Strainer collection

Or a series of small metal objects with holes in them. I have a strange fascination with the wide variety of decorative arrangements in the holes of different tea strainers and similar objects. This collection has been growing over a number of years from my second-hand shop rummaging; my husband has also found quite a few for me. I once bought a whole box of stuff in an auction just for the tea strainer. They hang on the kitchen wall.

4. Frances Hansen drawing

I have always loved Frances' work and about 10 years ago I did a swap with her and got a beautiful atmospheric drawing called Rain. The background is a deep purple wash with drawings of colander like structures that seem to catch the movement of lines that fall into them. There is such depth and mood in this work that I never tire of looking at it.

5. Heart shaped necklace

Made by my grandfather during WWI. The pendant, which hangs on a chain is a double-sided clear heart made from the Bakelite window of a shot-down German plane. My grandfather Jack carved and polished this heart while stationed in Egypt. Inside are two photographs back to back - one of his mother, the other his then fiance, my grandmother Elsie. Jack wore this for the four years he was in the war, he and Elsie married five days after his return to New Zealand.

6. Helen Britton brooch

Helen is an Australian jeweller who lives and works in Munich, Germany. In 2006 I was involved in bringing Helen and her work to New Zealand for a workshop at MSVA and an exhibition at Objectspace. Her work has been described as small indications of joy and play, I couldn't resist and had to buy a piece of her work and I covet many more. The work I own is a bright pink and black complex floral arrangement called Hot Garden.

7. My ironing board

Which is also my favourite cupboard. I don't really do ironing and when I occasionally decide I need to iron something it is a joy as I think my ironing board is so fabulous. Our house has very little room for storage and when renovating the kitchen/dining area we needed to fit in a space for the ironing board. Serendipitously, an inorganic collection was happening and our neighbours put out an old cupboard with a built-in pull-out ironing board - the style of which perfectly matched our renovated kitchen in which we cut up and re-used the original 1947 cupboard system.

8. A skirt made by Pearl

I bought my whole wedding outfit, including the shoes, from Pearl. The skirt part is made from layers of heavy tulle and is a full circle skirt, when you walk and dance in it the weight of it swings with you in the most glorious way. I feel like a million bucks when I wear it.

9. The vege garden

When it comes to gardens, give me a vegetable over a flower any day. I get so much pleasure out of growing vegetables, having a range of super-fresh ingredients at your fingertips exactly when you want them - superior taste and texture every time. Plus the visual cacophony of the harvest: the jewels of purple aubergines, red strawberries and yellow tomatoes, the cascades of fruiting zucchini and explosions of a rhubarb plant or feathery dill. I love all the forms and colours.

10. Arabesque A Taste of Morocco, Turkey and Lebanon by Claudia Roden

My most used cookbook and something of a kitchen bible for me. The way she writes about food inspires me to cook. The images look scrumptious and taste even better.

* Fingers Annual Group Show, November 16-28 2009, Fingers Gallery, 2 Kitchener Street, Auckland.