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Details
- Date
- (circa 1897)
- Media category
- Ceramic
- Materials used
- hand painted porcelain
- Dimensions
- 31.7 x 15.5 cm diam.
- Credit
- Purchased 1910/1912
- Location
- Naala Nura, ground level, Grand Courts
- Accession number
- 2229
- Copyright
- Artist information
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Ada Ione Newman
Works in the collection
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About
Ada Newman was a watercolourist, china painter and potter, and a leading figure in the ceramics movement in early 20th-century New South Wales. China painting was a specialised art form in which artists decorated pre-made porcelain objects, although Newman also began to make her own pottery from the late 1920s. She would usually design and paint directly onto porcelain without the assistance of underdrawing and fire her objects in a kiln – sometimes multiple times – to achieve the desired colour and sheen in the glaze.
'Jug with solanum design' represents Newman’s adoption of art nouveau aesthetics, popular in the decorative arts and painting. Her solanum design makes clever use of the plant’s fruit and flower, which serve as both languid undergrowth and elegant canopy, separated by lithe stalks. This organic linework is characteristic of art nouveau, which sought to imbue everyday objects with nature’s rhythms.
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Exhibition history
Shown in 2 exhibitions
Flora and Fauna - Australian Decorative Art from the Gallery's Collection, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 20 Apr 1998–20 Jun 1998
Grand Courts collection rehang, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Nov 2021–2023
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Bibliography
Referenced in 3 publications
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Deborah Edwards and Alisa de Torres, Australian decorative arts, Sydney, 1991, cover (colour illus.), 13. cat.no. 42
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Denise Mimmocchi, Australian Symbolism: the art of dreams, ‘Sydney Long: Arcadian myth and the decorative landscape’, pg. 110-122, Sydney, 2012, 116, 119 (colour illus.), 146.
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Leanne Santoro, Look, 'Theatre of the new world', pg. 42-45, Sydney, Jul 2020-Aug 2020, 44 (colour illus.), 45.
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