Overview
In the early years of the twentieth century, new opportunities arose for women artists to develop and market their talents. Under the influence of the Arts and Crafts Movement, public taste had turned to fine handcrafted objects. Women, with their small ‘dainty’ fingers, were believed to be ideally equipped for a number of handcrafts, including metalwork.
This jewel casket is an example of a technique called repoussé, where metal was hammered into shape by hand. Locally made repoussé work was being exhibited in Christchurch as early as 1900. By 1902, classes in the technique were available in Christchurch and Wellington. These were mostly attended by women. A display of repoussé and enamelled ‘art jewellery’ from Britain at the 1906 Christchurch Exhibition boosted its popularity further, and there was soon a big demand for it in New Zealand.
Growing numbers of young women attended the classes offered by New Zealand’s Art Schools, and vast quantities of repoussé items, mostly hammered from copper and often incorporating some enamel work, were turned out.
One successful professional metalworker was Annie Buckhurst. Another was Chrystabel Aitken, who made this jewel casket.
Born in 1905 in Gore, Aitken was an astonishingly versatile artist. The jewel casket hints at one of the skills that she became noted for – depicting animals. This talent was noticed early, when Aitken’s first art teacher in Gore compared her ability to draw horses with that of the famous animal artist Rosa Bonheur. The comparison must have delighted Aitken, and it encouraged in her a life-long love of Bonheur’s work.
Aitken’s family weren’t well off, but they were determined that their daughter’s artistic potential should be developed. When Aitken was seventeen, they moved from their Southland farm to Christchurch, so that she could go to the Canterbury College School of Art.
At the time, a depression in New Zealand had affected female employment prospects, and women were being urged to return to domestic pursuits. In 1918, in its annual report to Government, the Canterbury College School of Art had said that its training ‘should appeal to parents wishing their daughters to have a true and practical idea of making their homes beautiful.’ (1) But Aitken, like many other women at the time, had ambitions for an art career in the public sphere, and also needed to earn money.
At art school, she experimented with metal work, portrait painting, still life prints, jewellery and leatherwork. She excelled in all these areas, but it was sculpture and modelling that she enjoyed the most. The modelling master at the school, Francis Shurrock, became something of a mentor to her.
In 1926, Aitken took a job at the school, helping him with junior modelling classes. Like most women on the staff, she worked part time. The pay was low, but she could continue to live with her parents.
Shurrock had once told Aitken that she’d never get work as a sculptor ‘because a woman wouldn’t be able to handle the big things you’d have to use in building up an armature and all that sort of thing.’(2) But Aitken was determined to try.
In the late 1930s she joined a team of sculptors commissioned to design and carve individual pieces and panels for the Centennial Exhibition Buildings at Rongotai. Aitken carved a huge plaster frieze above the entrance. To do this she had to work fifteen metres above the main entrance of the building suspended on a wooden board, without scaffolding, in the Wellington wind. Aitken said, ‘I liked doing it, but by Jove it was dangerous up there.’ (3)
It was perhaps this commission that most firmly cemented her reputation as a sculptor. Te Papa holds one example of Aitken’s modelling work – a sculpture of two horses from around 1935.
References
1. Calhoun, Ann (1993). Chrystabel and Florence, A Sculptor and a Design Teacher. Art New Zealand. No. 68, Spring, p 102
2. Calhoun, Ann (2000). The Arts and Crafts Movement in New Zealand 1870–1940: Women Make their Mark. Auckland University Press, p 184
3. Calhoun, Ann (2000). The Arts and Crafts Movement in New Zealand 1870–1940: Women Make their Mark. Auckland University Press, p 183
Text originally published in Tai Awatea, Te Papa's onfloor multimedia database (2001).