Side table, featuring bottlebrushes

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Schulim Krimper, cabinetmaker
Romania/Australia
1893 – 1971

Neil Douglas, artist
Australia
1911 – 2003

Arthur Merric Boyd Pottery, Murrumbeena, Melbourne, manufacturer
Australia
1944 – 1962

Side table, featuring bottlebrushes
1949
wood, ceramic
Place made
Victoria
Medium
wood, ceramic
Dimensions
45.5 x 55.7 x 45.3 cm (overall)
Credit line
Gift of Dr Mark Upton and Catherine Upton through the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program 2023
Accession number
20236F4
Signature and date
Not signed. Not dated.
Collection area
Australian decorative arts and design

  • Neil Douglas was a passionate artist, potter, environmentalist and writer. Born in 1911, he became fascinated with the natural world at a young age. In the 1930's he became friends with John and Sunday Reed, and after the second world war he joined Arthur Boyd, John Perceval, and Peter Herbst at the Arthur Merric Boyd Pottery (AMB Pottery) in Murrumbeena, becoming a partner of the organisation in 1950. Neil Douglas' designs where generally whimsical scenes, often featuring Australian landscapes.

  • Arthur Merric Boyd Pottery (AMB) was established in 1944 in the Melbourne suburb of Murrumbeena by the artists Arthur Boyd and John Perceval and named after Boyd’s grandfather. The goal of AMB was to produce one-off items of ceramics for a growing local market interested in Australian art and ceramics in the post-Second World War era. Vessels including cups and bowls were hand-thrown on the wheel by Boyd and Perceval, and they, along with commercially - produced tiles, were hand-painted with whimsical scenes.

  • After fleeing Nazi Germany and arriving in Melbourne in 1939, the cabinet-maker Schulim Krimper became known in the 1950s and 1960s as Australia’s premier supplier of custom-made furniture. Influenced by the work of the Deutsche Werkstätten, or German craft workshops, and interested in the Biedermeier style of the early nineteenth century, Krimper combined traditional cabinet-making techniques with a modern approach, in which wood and natural finishes were celebrated.