Do you know the whereabouts of this group of woodcarvings known as the 'Seven Lamps of Architecture'?
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In the 1940s, when the South Australian School of Art, then known as the School of Arts and Crafts, was based at the Exhibition Building on North Terrace, its Elizabeth Armstrong Memorial Library contained a group of wood carvings which were known as the ‘Seven Lamps of Architecture’. The last known reference to the memorial carvings comes from an item written by a former teacher at the School of Art, Mary Packer Harris, which is titled 'In one splendour spun' and reads:
'After the demolition of the School of Arts and Crafts in the creeper-covered old Exhibition Building, to give place to an excrescence of steel and glass structures (1), the Library was the only symbol of our old Art School to be re-established, with its timeless memories in the new Art School in Stanley Street, North Adelaide'.
Whether or not the carvings were actually installed at the Stanley Street cannot be confirmed although this researcher (2) who was a student there in the early 1970s has a vague memory of them being installed in the School's Library which was then located at the western front corner of the building. It is also unclear as to whether or not the carvings were relocated along with the School to its new site within the Underdale Campus of Torrens CAE in 1979. Or, whether they remained at the Stanley Street site during the years the school operated as TAFE's North Adelaide School of Art, that is from 1979 to 1999, after which this school moved to its new purpose-built campus in Light Square. From 1999, the Stanley Street site stood empty pending decisions about its potential future; these came in 2005 when it was sold to developers who completely demolished the building to make way for 'social housing'.
Read on, and if you have any information as to the whereabouts of these memorial carvings, or you know anything else of relevance to this search, please contact members of the SASA History Project on friends@friendsasa.com
More on the Elizabeth Armstrong Memorial Library and the wood carvings
This Library was developed as a memorial to ‘a beloved painting mistress who taught on the staff for a considerable number of years. Teachers and students have combined to enshrine her memory in an unusual and beautiful manner. The whole library in seven bays, carved in European oak, has been designed and the panels carved by teachers and students, in the united manner of the craft guilds of old’.
‘The shining of the spirit through the seven lamps of Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, Obedience, is symbolized in the panels which form a frieze above the glass cupboards, which are separated by fluted pilasters. The illustrations (below) … give some idea of the beauty of these designs – the designs being the entire conception of individual students’. (3)
The inspiration for the design of these wood carvings came from writings on architecture with the same title by British art critic and social thinker John Ruskin (1819-1900) which were published in 1849. (4)
Elizabeth C Armstrong was the first Painting Mistress to be appointed to School of Art in 1892. She taught there for 35 years before her retirement in 1928.
Elizabeth Armstrong instructing a pupil at the School of Design. Elizabeth Armstrong was a prominent art instructor in Adelaide from 1893 to 1928. This image appears with six others in The Observer on May 13 1905, page 26 under the heading 'Students at work at the South Australian School of Design'. Source: State Library of South Australia, Searcy Collection. Record No: PRG 280/1/3/332.
Notes
(1) Here the author, Mary Packer Harris, is referring to the Napier Building which now forms part of the University of Adelaide.
The area occupied by the Art School within the Exhibition Building is now the open plaza area which sits above the underground car park for this University.
(2) The Researcher for the SASA History Project is Dr Jenny Aland, PSM, who was a Dip Fine Art, Painting, student at Stanley Street from 1972 to 1974.
(3) Excerpt from ‘The cosmic rhythm of art and literature’ by Mary Packer Harris, published by Frank Cork, Adelaide, 1948, pp 163-164; Mary Packer Harris taught arts and literature at the School of Arts and Crafts and at the Girls Central Art School (1924 to 1954), during the years when both schools were housed within the Exhibition Building on North Terrace. She also gave ‘Art Extension Lectures’ at the Art Gallery of South Australia and the Contemporary Art Society.
(4) Ruskin’s ‘The seven lamps of architecture’ was published in May 1849. The 'lamps' of the title are Ruskin's principles of architecture, which he later enlarged upon in a three-volume series called ‘The stones of Venice’.