Lindy Lee’s Ouroboros installation sculpture, 2023 outside the National Gallery of Australia, Canberra.
Dear Clients and Friends,
I hope that you had a restful winter season.
During this period I escaped the cold to spend two months in Australia. During this time I visited a number of national museums including the National Gallery of Australia in Canberra and the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne.
At the end of February I visited the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery’s Chinese collection, most of which had belonged to the collector Ferdinand Schiller (1866-1938).
I wish you all the best for the spring season and look forward to catching up with some of you during this period.
Best wishes,
Robert Bradlow, April 2026
Colour and Form in the Melbourne CBD Skyline
It is not often that I begin a newsletter with a look at architecture, but after dropping off a hire car in South Melbourne in early January, I decided on a walk to the city to catch a train home. This took me through the south west area of the Melbourne Central Business District (CBD), which is adjacent to the docklands area.
During this half hour walk, I had to keep stopping to take photographs, as I had not been in this part of the city before and what I saw had quite a strong effect on me.
What immediately struck me about what I saw, was a real attempt by architects and city planners to be bold and brave, to create buildings and bridges that were not only functional, but that were also beautiful to look at.
The Webb bridge is one example of this. It was designed by the firm of architects Denton Corker Marshall in collaboration with artist Robert Owen in 2005 and when walking through it, one really feels that it is a work of sculpture, rather than just a bridge spanning a body of water.
Many buildings in the Melbourne sky line have been clad in blue tinted mirrored glass, which reflects light and the sky, giving them a lighter, less dense appearance.
Walking up Collins street, one comes to the Melbourne Quarter Precinct, which is a mix of residential and office buildings and features a Sky Park, which is 11 metres above street level and is accessed by lifts and a white spiral staircase.
The Sky Park features cafés, grassed areas and is flanked by long, open arcades with creepers and Australian native plants.
It has been nearly twenty years since I lived in Melbourne and it did occur to me on that January morning, that the strong sense of optimism that the city is expressing through its buildings illustrates that an urban environment can be one which encompasses beauty and incorporates elements from the natural world.
28 February – Bristol Museum and Art Gallery – Some Highlights from the Schiller Collection
At the end of February I visited the Bristol Museum and Art Gallery. I have been several times before and I always enjoy a visit to the Asian galleries. One enters the building via an impressive hall, which is a grand space of marble columns and tiers of balustraded balconies.
The Asian galleries are on the second floor and a large part of the Chinese collection was collected by Ferdinand Schiller (1866-1938) and donated by his brother Max after his death in 1945.
Ferdinand Nassau Schiller was born in Calcutta in 1866 and was educated at Clifton College, Bristol, and St John’s College, Cambridge. From 1904-1931 he was the manager of the Credito Italiano Bank branch in London.
He began collecting Chinese ceramics in the second decade of the 20th century and was the 13th member to join the Oriental Ceramics Society in 1921. Schiller was collecting at a very high level and lent 27 pieces for the Royal Academy International Exhibition of Chinese Art (1936-37).
The Asian gallery is set out with a number of cabinets, each containing a different category of wares, such as the Jizhou, Junyao and Ding kilns of the Song dynasty as well as blue and white wares of the Ming dynasty and monochrome and polychrome wares of the Qing dynasty.
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Of the number of Jizhou bowls on display, I have selected two for mention, the first being the bowl with an unusual flower shaped slip decoration to the interior. The decoration is far more elaborate than most Jizhou bowls and is particularly successful in this example.
Another unusual Jizhou bowl is the one that has been decorated with drops or splashes of glaze, which resemble tear drops. During the firing process, the end of each amber drop has turned a bluish white colour where it has reacted with the surface of the glaze.
The Schiller Collection features a really fine group of Yuan and early Ming dynasty blue and white porcelain. One of the most striking pieces in the group is the large qilin and peony decorated storage jar (guan). In the mid 14th century tradition, it is designed in a series of horizontal decorative bands, the largest with a continuous peony scroll to the centre and a large band of qilin amongst lotus at the shoulder.
In contrast, the small and delicate Chenghua mark and period (1465-87) ‘Palace’ bowl is one of the finest pieces in the collection. Porcelain production during this period reached its highest point in the Ming dynasty, where the potting, painting and refinement of glaze was at its best. The design of the day lily is painted to the interior and exterior of the bowl and the artist has left large areas of white ground which, with its negative spaces, offsets the painted decoration really effectively.
Two of the finest examples of Qing dynasty imperial famille rose porcelain were donated by Lord Dulverton in May 1953 and were originally on display in the British embassy in Peking.
The peonies on the Yongzheng mark and period pear-shaped vase are particularly finely painted and contrast well with the rocks, which are more loosely rendered in a series of washes. The Qianlong mark and period magpie and pomegranate bottle vase is also very finely painted and is of a particularly rare design.
A recent addition to the gallery is a long term loan of a group of jades from the Whitaker Collection, which were collected by a father and son.
A number of these jades date from the Qianlong period and feature scenes with deer in mountainous landscapes. The ornately carved wood stands complement the jades and really aid in their display.
Two particularly large and fine examples depict scholars and children in mountainous landscapes with pine trees. It is likely that these two examples and the two above would have been carved from large river pebbles.
The Bristol Museum is renowned for its collection of Chinese glass, which numbers around 300 pieces mainly from the Qianlong period (1736-1795) of the Qing dynasty. The collection was acquired in 1950 from H R Burrows Abbey through the National Art Collections Fund.
Of particular note in the collection is a Qianlong mark and period three piece garniture. It would have most likely been part of a five piece garniture made in the Palace workshops and used on a Buddhist altar in the Forbidden City by the Emperor. Each piece is made of white glass which was overlaid with red floral decoration. The combination of these two colours is somewhat striking.
Another piece with overlay decoration is the huqqa base decorated with bats and cloud scrolls. In this example, the white decoration is overlaid on red. Another example I particularly liked was the thin baluster vase composed of white, blue pale green and red canes, that are fused together in a spiral design.
The Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery is really worth visiting and I have really only touched on a few pieces that are in this fine collection.
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