Design

Photograph of walking stick, with unicorn head handle

Whimsical walking sticks

May 2, 2018

Mythical creatures, grotesque faces, writhing snakes, horse’s hooves, glinting shovels and pickaxes… all things not usually seen on walking sticks. However, the carvings of Robert Read display the potential creativity and whimsy of this part utilitarian, part fashionable item.

Shape 2017: Student Design

March 28, 2018

Shape 2017 is a showcase of year 12 student work from the syllabus areas concerned with design and technology – Design and Technology / Textiles and Design / Industrial Technology. This year MAAS has 38 fine examples on show from around New South Wales.

International Women’s Day 2018: Female Designers in the MAAS Collection

March 8, 2018

March 8 is International Women's Day, a global day celebrating the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.

Design Nation: When Australian Design Moulded the World

March 1, 2018

Colonised Australia felt it had grown into an independent, and quite sexy young adult by the 1980s. The 1988 bicentenary was a celebration of all that Europeans had acheived in Australia in 200 years. It was also a year which benefited from the optimism of the Wran NSW Labor Government - which commissioned, among other public institutions and spaces, the ingeniously designed converted power station as the new home for the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences in Ultimo, Sydney.

The International Auto Buggy – a real “horseless carriage”

January 23, 2018

On Australia Day, 26 January 2018, the CARnivale classic day display will be held in Parramatta Park in Western Sydney. The car I’ve chosen from the Museum’s eclectic automobile collection to exhibit at the event is a 20 hp International Auto Buggy made in 1910.

Life Cycles: Sustainable Materials Library

January 10, 2018

In 1907, while developing an alternative to shellac, a natural resin secreted from the East Asian lac bug and used to insulate electrical cables in the early 20th century, Belgian chemist Leo Baekeland invented the world’s first mouldable synthetic polymer, called Bakelite.

Holden is history

October 20, 2017

Australians are reeling with the announcement on 11 December, 2013, that Holden, an Australian icon, will stop building cars here in 2017. How has this happened? With some 66 makes available in Australia these days, twice the choice US drivers have, clearly we don't like football, meat pies, kangaroos and Holden cars quite enough any more.

3D Printing and the Open Source Movement

September 26, 2017

If you have been to a maker fair or school in the last few years, then you may have seen 3D printers in action. But when did this manufacturing technology first emerge and why was there so much hype? 3D printing is a form of additive manufacturing, where the object is created by laying down successive layers of building material until the desired form is reached.

Bodice of Janet McDonald's purple wedding gown

The Mystery of Mrs Janet McDonald

July 28, 2017

This wedding dress was worn by an Australian Indigenous women identified as Mrs Janet McDonald. Do you know anything about her?

Frank Lloyd Wright 150th

June 7, 2017

8 June marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, one of the 20th century's most important architects. Born in Wisconsin, Frank Lloyd Wright established his own practice in Chicago in 1893 and led the Prairie School, a movement that spanned the end of the 19th century and the start of the 20th century.

New Year picture, ‘Joyful celebration for the abundant harvest (Xiqingfengshou)'

Chinese New Year pictures & propaganda posters

January 25, 2017

In celebration of the Lunar New Year (28 January 2017), I have curated a small group of Chinese New Year pictures and propaganda posters. The brightly coloured posters portray elements of Chinese political visual culture.

World AIDS Day 2016

November 28, 2016

HIV is still here - and it's on the move For folk who lived through the 1980s, AIDS was an omnipresent gargoyle. The disease was part of the contemporary culture. It had insinuated itself into current affairs stories and commercials, into youth culture, gay culture, tea-room discussions, into jokes, bullying; and into people’s bodies.

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