Edith Morris: Jewellery designer and silversmith: Tuhinga 20

Tuhinga 20: 1-14

ABSTRACT: The documented history of New Zealand’s silversmiths and jewellers seems to shift from the nineteenth-century immigrant manufacturers, through the Arts and Crafts-influenced first decades of the twentieth century, to the artist jewellers who rose to prominence in the 1970s and continue to be an important aspect of our international craft and art reputation. There is, however, little record of those individuals who worked in the intervening decades. Edith Morris trained in New Zealand and worked as a silversmith and jeweller from her home in Wellington for more than 25 years in the middle of the twentieth century. Visually, conceptually and chronologically, her work can be seen to span and fit between those better known aspects of New Zealand jewellery.

KEY WORDS: Edith Morris, New Zealand jewellery, studio jewellery, New Zealand craftswomen, New Zealand silversmiths, Charles Brasch.