The grandeur of Olveston in Duendin has been captured by photographer Jane Ussher in a new book. Photo / Jane Ussher
Jane Phare talks to Kiwi photographer Jane Ussher about why her latest project, ‘Olveston, Portrait of a Home’, is more of a tribute to a slice of New Zealand history than a coffee-table book.
Jane Ussher is used to being patient. Good photography can’t be rushed and then there are those empty minutes during long exposures. It is during those minutes that Ussher lets her mind wander, asking questions about what she’s seeing.
How did the family who built the beautiful mansion high on a Dunedin hill live? On what journey to far-flung countries did they buy those artefacts? Who helped the family with the remarkably bold interior decorating of the home they named Olveston?
Ussher pondered similar personal questions during the weeks she spent in Antarctica, meticulously photographing the contents of the huts used by Sir Ernest Shackleton and his men (built 1907/1908) and Captain Robert Falcon Scott (1911).
In Scott’s hut, waiting for long exposures, she wondered about the owner of a pair of cufflinks, “beautiful” dress shoes and a grosgrain ribbon used to tie a bowtie. It was a question tinged with sadness knowing that Scott and four of his men perished on the ice.
“I would think ‘what would that man have been thinking when he was packing his trunk? Where did he think he was going to be wearing those shoes, those cufflinks?’”
Frozen in time, too, is Dunedin’s Olveston, built between 1904 and 1907 for Dunedin businessman David Theomin, his wife Marie and their two children Edward and Dorothy. After Edward died, childless, in 1928 the house passed to Dorothy where she lived until her death in 1966. She left the house and its contents to the City of Dunedin, largely untouched since her parents had lived there.
It is that preservation, in its original state, that makes the stately home so remarkable. Inside its stately rooms are more than 8780 items that the family collected, admired and used: artwork, furniture, Persian rugs, fabrics, artefacts and souvenirs, silver, china, crystal and Murano glass, light fittings and chandeliers, Japanese weapons, marble and bronze statues, tapestries, wall hangings, clocks, kitchen utensils and personal items.
In a glass-sided garage in the garden is the family’s restored 1921 Fiat Tipo 510, tracked down and returned to Olveston after Dorothy’s death.
John Walsh, a writer, author and editor specialising in architecture, contributes a meticulous history of Olveston and its place in a thriving early 20th-century Dunedin, buoyed by the gold rush of the late 19th century. In addition, he has catalogued all the treasures seen in each room to give context to Ussher’s images.
The result is a 287-page tribute to Olveston’s stately Edwardian architecture, its contents and the family who lived there. The Theomin family were undoubtedly wealthy. David Theomin made most of his money importing and selling thousands of pianos, through his company Dresdin Piano Company, to families who could afford them.
He commissioned the renowned English architect Ernest George to design him a grand home on Dunedin’s aptly named Royal Terrace. George never visited New Zealand so local architects Mason & Wales supervised the build.
The family travelled extensively, collecting artefacts and buying elegant items for their home, but also investing in New Zealand artwork and ceramics.
Visiting the house now, it is as though the family have just popped out for the afternoon. There in Dorothy’s room are toys from her childhood and photographs of her mountaineering exploits. In the kitchen are the large copper sinks used for washing precious china, and the original kitchen utensils.
Back in the 1960s the Dunedin Council originally rejected the offer of Olveston, worried about the cost of its upkeep. But after a vigorous public campaign, the council relented.
Walsh writes that Olveston could have been lost or “ like many lesser Dunedin mansions that have been partitioned into rental flats, succumbed inexorably to the effects of exuberant student occupation (and long-term landlord neglect)”.
Now Olveston is a Dunedin bucket-list visit, up there with Larnach Castle and the albatross colony.
It was a house much admired in its day. Those lucky enough to be invited to a lavish formal dinner would be treated to multi-course dinners for up to 18 guests, served on Wedgewood china and with crystal glasses.
Afterwards, guests might have gone upstairs to play on the tournament-sized billiard table, or have a game of mahjong in the adjacent card room filled with Moroccan, Turkish and Egyptian tapestries, fabrics and ornaments collected in the family’s travels.
Ussher describes the card room as “a little jewel”, from where guests could peek through a small window down to the Great Hall, or ballroom, below.
One of Olveston’s most elegant rooms is Marie Theomin’s drawing room, full of treasures, furniture, ornaments and paintings. In the corner is a Steinway piano, a gift to daughter Dorothy, and on a wall a magnificent Olveston tapestry.
A convex mirror, featured on the book’s cover, hangs by the entry door. Marie Theomin’s butler would stand with his back to the guests gathered for tea, watching through the mirror for a signal from the lady of the house that more hot water or scones were needed.
It’s one of Ussher’s favourite rooms.
“The colours in that room, with the strawberry reds and the gold and the bluey grey (on the walls), that became the cover right from the outset and it was a room we kept coming back to.”
She describes the interior colours, wall coverings and funiture choices at Olveston as “brave and bold”, and “remarkable” for the early 1900s era.
Impressive, too, were Olveston’s bathrooms featuring indoor plumbing and flush toilets, heated towel rails, a water filter, a Doulton shower head over the bath, English tiles and beautiful stained-glass windows.
Capturing the feel of the house and doing justice to its contents took hours of planning by Ussher, Walsh and Massey University Press publisher Nicola Leggatt.
Ussher, who was the Listener’s chief photographer for almost 30 years, used a Hasselblad digital camera to photograph the rooms in their natural light. Tungsten light was not an option, she says, particularly using long exposures. The artificial light would overwhelm the photo, turning the image orange.
Since most of Olveston’s rooms are south-facing and therefore dark, the photographer and publisher devised ingenious ways to use mirrors, torches and various reflective surfaces to bounce light off objects during the exposures.
To show the intricacy of the room’s light fittings Legatt, hidden from view, would flick the light switch on for five seconds during an exposure of a minute or more, so that the light appeared to be on in the photo.
“It was clever,” Ussher laughs. “We figured out a way that we could hide the publisher of Massey University Press and make the photo work.”
Jane Phare is the New Zealand Herald’s deputy print editor.