Ceramics collector Walter Cook at his Wellington home in the late 1980s. Photo / Supplied
Ceramics collector Walter Cook at his Wellington home in the late 1980s. Photo / Supplied
Walter Cook was a determined collector. In 1965, aged 24, the BA student bought an Art Nouveau tea set at a Wellington second-hand shop. It would be the start of 25 years of collecting ceramics, glass and metal objects, mainly those made in Britain and Europe, particularly Scandinavia, but alsoa few from New Zealand.
The idea was to amass a collection that would reflect the evolution of design from the Arts and Crafts movement, from 1880-1920, to the rise of post-war Modernism in the 60s and 70s, embracing the styles of Aestheticism, Art Nouveau and Art Deco. The pieces included bowls, vases, plates, tea sets, tiles and wallpapers.
From left: William De Morgan ceramic dish, c1885; Della Robbia Pottery vase, c1895; Minton’s Secessionist vase, 1912; Ruskin Pottery vase, 1912. Photo / Supplied
Despite working with a modest budget, Cook sought out work from the leading designers of their day, including William Morris, Christopher Dresser, Susie Cooper, Keith Murray and Berte Jessen, as well as from manufacturers such as Liberty & Co, WMF and Royal Copenhagen. Once he’d achieved his goal of a large and varied collection, in 1992 he gifted it to Te Papa.
Cook, who still lives in Wellington, has said in an interview the pieces demonstrated a strong urge in the 19th century to find a style of the times and to link it to the belief that “the health of the individual and of society was bound up in a well-designed environment fitted out with well-designed things, and that fed into international modernism”. The collection at Te Papa has been the subject of two exhibitions, in 1995 and 2012.
Towards Modernism: The Walter Cook Collection at Te Papa, by Justine Olsen (Te Papa Press, $75) is out on June 12.
