Craft / “Blanche Tilden – ripple effect: a 25-year survey”. At Canberra Museum & Gallery until February 12. Reviewed by MEREDITH HINCHLIFFE.

IN 1995 Blanche Tilden was awarded a Graduate Diploma of Art, Gold and Silversmithing from the Canberra School of Art, Australian National University.

This followed an extended period of formal education and practical work with two leading artists: Peter Minson, master flameworker and Susan Cohn from the jewellery and metal studio, Workshop 3000.

These experiences bring together glass and metal – the two materials that Tilden uses to create her kinetic jewellery. Her jewellery is always articulated.

Tilden has long been fascinated by the beauty of industrial processes and the materials of modern architecture. Take the familiar form of a bicycle chain – she has used this as a model for many of the necklaces, pendants, chains, and rings she creates. The easy movement of objects with moving parts are her starting point.

This travelling exhibition, created by Geelong Gallery, shows one of Tilden’s earliest works, and the most recent: created in 2021.

Tilden embraced flamework, or lampwork, when she took up glass as a material, as the method of creating the glass components she needed. This requires concentrated focus over a flame that softens, melts, and then reshapes glass tubes.

Using mostly dark colours – sometimes tempered by a gold link, or clear glass – Tilden uses a limited palette of metals: anodised aluminium, titanium, sterling silver and stainless steel. This gives her body of work a remarkable cohesive and immediately identifiable quality – which helps to create this outstanding exhibition.

Tilden frequently collaborates with other artists. From 2005 to 2008, Phoebe Porter undertook a mentorship with Tilden at Studio Haçienda in Melbourne. Together they worked on a project titled “General Assembly”, one of Tilden’s few sorties into making brooches. Visitors were invited to select their own components to create a brooch.

In 2016 Tilden collaborated with Mary Featherston, wife of the late Grant Featherston, a driving force in innovative design-led manufacturing. Ms Featherston gifted Featherston’s archive to the National Gallery of Victoria. The archive included a collection of glass jewellery and parts made by Featherston in the ’40s. Tilden and Ms Featherston met and The Featherston x Tilden jewellery edition is the result of their collaboration.

Tilden’s work is held by many Canberra collectors, and it is also held in many public institutions in Australia.

The display itself is magnificent. Most of the work is shown on curved tables of different heights, some under clear acrylic domes. Photographs, showing some of the collectors wearing their works, are scattered throughout the gallery. The care with which the exhibition has been developed, curated and displayed is a testament to the quality of Tilden’s work.