Needless to say, Craft Australia challenged these views and secured a stay of execution until the end of April.

It’s only a bit of break, but will at least ensure that the programs that have been established by the organisation and the historical and visual archives of the Australian studio craft movement  collected over the past 40 years are not lost.

News to hand is the launch of a multi-year project, the “Craft Australia National Historic Collection”, a slide archive on the development and practice of the Australian Studio Craft Movement from the 1960s to the early 1990s that is now digitised and available online to practitioners, researchers and curators.

The collection of over 4000 images includes work by luminaries Peter Tully, Susan Cohn, Robert Baines, Les Blakebrough, Liz Williams, Ragnar Hansen, Robert Baines, Magdalena Abakanowicz, Helmut Lueckenhausen, Greg Daly, Johannes Kuhnen, Helen Aitken-Kuhnen, Marian Hosking, Robert Bell, Gwen Hanssen-Piggott, Jeff Mincham, Shigeo Shiga, Stefan Szonyi, Alan Watt, Scott Chaseling, Tom Moore, Solvig Baas Becking, Margaret Grafton, Klaus Moje, Warren Langley, Nick Mount, Robyn Backen, Sieglinde Karl-Spence, Ray Norman and others .

It charts the development of the studio craft movement in Australia, across the disciplines of gold and silver smithing, textiles, ceramics, glass and wood and includes rare material from the 1960s and 1970s.

Craft Australia will close on the April 30 as planned, but has negotiated with the National Gallery of Australia to rehouse the collection as part of their library holdings.

Meantime, retiring director Catrina Vignando says from 2011-2008, the organisation received three grants from the Community Heritage Grant Program funded by the Australian Government through the National Library of Australia, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Office for the Arts, allowing digitisation of the most important slides, but that the National Historic Collection is part of a wider collection of more than 25,000 35mm slides of original artwork for which a home  has not yet been found.

Inquiries to catrina.vignando@craftaustralia.org.au

 “Craft Australia National Historic Collection” will be managed by the NGA but it can be accessed at http://ehive.com/account/3653 and is also searchable on PictureAustralia http://www.pictureaustralia.org