Heartwood: Tasmanian Women in Timber

Sally Brown (b 1982 Tasmania) is a Tasmanian artist and designer who creates unique furniture, sculptural, and functional objects, often reworking salvaged materials. Sally’s fascination with natural forms and structures she observes in her surrounding environment informs the aesthetics of her practice. This influence emerges in her use of organic forms, natural colours and an emphasis on pattern and texture. Sally makes all of her work by hand, and the hands-on, crafting process is very important to her.

The not-quite-perfect character of a handcrafted object provides for Sally a form of artistic expression, as do the subtle differences and variations that render each piece unique.

These three stools were made individually by hand, with deliberate, subtle differences. Each piece of Eucalypt was roughly cut to shape, then placed on a fire and carefully turned so that the action of the flames smoothed each piece to shape and hardened the timber. Once cooled, the loose charcoal was removed by wire brushing. The leg structure is made from stainless steel bar and differs from stool to stool.

Salvaged eucalypt, Stainless steel, beeswax
450mm (h) x 400mm (w) x 400mm (d)

This piece emerged from the consideration of slats for a bench seat being much stronger
on edge than flat, and from celery top pine being suitable for bending into curves, as in boatbuilding. The form of Warp Bench is partly inspired by the accumulative tension that sometimes occurs in a piece of weaving, causing the warp strands to become more tightly pinched toward the middle. The blonde colour of the wood and the splayed curves are to me evocative of water runnels across a beach, or the strand–like tension within a tree trunk.

Warp Bench won the acquisitive Clarence Prize for Furniture in 2007 and has been loaned by City of Clarence at Rosny Barn.

Celery top pine, Stainless steel, PVC
400mm (h) x 1750mm (w) x 600mm (d)

Linda (b. 1960) is a furniture designer and maker based in nipaluna/Hobart. She completed a BFA (Design in Wood) at the University of Tasmania’s School of Art in 1992 and now runs a part-time design practice from a studio with partner Stuart Houghton.

As a studio-based designer working primarily with timber, Linda’s practice includes commissions, limited production pieces, and collaborations with other artists and designers. Her work has been exhibited widely in Australia and internationally, and she has taught at both the UTAS School of Art and Sturt School for Wood in Mittagong, NSW.

Through membership in several design organisations, she remains committed to supporting the growth of the craft and design sector.

The pair of cabinets reflect Linda’s interest in surface decoration and the process of labelling, cataloguing, and storage. The motifs on the label and inside each drawer represent the real or imaginary imprint left by an object. The cabinets are small personal pieces of furniture, identical in shape, but different in their detailing. They are designed to be together but almost have their own separate personalities. Like many of Linda’s other cabinets, the attention to detailing means the viewer has to interact with and use the piece to fully appreciate it.

Myrtle, Hoop pine plywood, MDF, bronze, copper
650mm (h) x 400mm (w) x 400mm (d)

Linda began making timber handbags for a project celebrating the 100-year anniversary of the Bauhaus. Drawing on form and colour exercises undertaken by students, the handbags became small studies in form and function - objects to experiment with in spare hours using mostly scraps and leftovers from other projects.

This piece reworks a 2021 design with new side panels, a fuller curve, and improved proportions. Linda is fascinated by campaign furniture for the sense of style and order it brought to its owners’ temporary lodgings, and considers the timber bags a distillation of that ethos - objects both practical and impractical at once.

Tasmanian myrtle and Eucalypt veneer
240mm (h) x 240mm (w) x 83mm (d)

This caddy is part of a series of five, each inspired by a notable person associated with Hadley's Orient Hotel in Hobart. Opera singer Amy Sherwin (Tasmania's nightingale) grew up in the Huon Valley, and it is reported that as a child, she would linger and sing near the road that ran past her family's farm, in the hope she might be discovered.

Linda chose Leatherwood for her caddy, a beautifully grained tough timber that grows in that vicinity, and decorated the lid of the box with a grey fantail cut from silver.

Leatherwood, Tasmanian sassafras, silver, Horizontal scrub
128mm (h) x 114mm (w) x 114mm (d)

Ellen Nora Payne’s (1865-1962) timber carving helped establish Tasmania’s reputation for craftsmanship and design. Born in Westbury, she trained in London at Goldsmiths School of Art before returning to create a prolific body of work spanning furniture, memorials and ecclesiastical commissions.

Her carving combined patience and precision with bold, sculptural rhythm, defining her many civic and church commissions of the time. Her 1939 coat of arms for the Tasmanian Parliament remains a touchstone of the state’s design heritage, as do her abundant carvings for St Andrew’s Church in Westbury.

Nellie stands as an origin point whose mastery of timber opened pathways for generations to follow.

This chair is typical of Nellie’s work - finely balanced between structure and ornament, its disciplined elegance reflecting both her Arts and Crafts training and a distinctly Tasmanian material integrity.

It is also characteristic of her practice of dedicating works to other women.