Queensland jeweller & silversmith CA Brown

Sun 2 Jun 2024

Australia’s colonial period was marked by an exuberant exploration of the Australian landscape, both physically and artistically, the artworks and ornamental delicacies that emerged from this time reflect the talent of the craftspeople and highlight the quality of locally available materials. Queensland artists such as silversmith Augustus Kosvitz and cabinetmaker Joshua Ebenston fashioned one-of-a-kind pieces for wealthy pastoralists and successful business people, while firms such as Flavelle Brothers supplied a mix of locally fashioned articles and imported wares.

Brisbane 1870s

When CA (Charles Allen) Brown (2 February 1850-1908) arrived in Brisbane in 1870, he had just completed a seven-year apprenticeship under Sydney-based Danish silversmith Christian Ludwig Qwist. Brown soon established himself as a working jeweller and silversmith catering to Queensland’s most discerning clientele, his premises located at 88 Edward Street. The business soon grew in size and importance and by 1888 he received official appointment as ‘Jeweller, Watch and Clock Maker by special appointment to the Government of Queensland’ before moving to 42 Queen Street in 1892.

Brown’s arrival in Brisbane coincided with an affluent period in Queensland’s history as deposits of gold had been discovered in Gympie in 1867, and soon gold would be found in Charters Towers in North Queensland a year after his arrival. With its gold boom between 1872 and 1899 it’s population grew from under 3,000 to around 30,000 which made Charters Towers the largest city in Queensland other than Brisbane where the metropolitan population at the beginning of the 1870s was some 18,000 and by 1900 was around 120,000, with Queensland’s population increasing from 115,000 to close to 500,000.

Charters Towers gold diggings 1878

Brisbane became a municipality only 11 years earlier on 6 June 1859 when Queen Victoria approved the creation of the new colony called Queensland. By the 1880s Brisbane became the main site for commerce in the state, and a capital in waiting until 1901. The mid-1880s also brought a period of economic prosperity through trade, and a major construction boom in Brisbane as the infrastructure of the Colony of Queensland improved.

Over the next 38 years the business employed about twenty watchmakers, engravers, jewellers and silversmiths, including family members. Besides jewellery, as was the custom of the time, CA Brown’s workshop was kept busy with commissions for elaborate ceremonies, agricultural and industrial exhibitions, and state displays with cups, trophies and medals in demand.

Brown created some of the finest metalwork seen in Queensland and in 1901 produced the gold mayoral medallion and chain for the City of Brisbane that is still used by the Lord Mayors on ceremonial occasions. It was designed for the Federation celebrations and first worn by Alderman Thomas Proe on 20 May 1901 (illustrated) when he welcomed the Duke and Duchess of Cornwell and York (later King George V and Queen Mary), when they arrived in Queensland for a 25 day royal tour of the state after opening the first Australian Parliament in Melbourne.

Gold mayoral medallion & chain for the City of Brisbane 1901

Ceremonial archway, George Street, Brisbane 1901

This silver and mother-of-pearl brooch c.1890 (illustrated), with its confident mother-of-pearl shell carving and delicate wrought silver vine leaf border has all the stylistic qualities that mark it as the work of CA Brown. The National Gallery of Australia holds in its collection a hair ornament by CA Brown in a remarkably similar style (illustrated). In both items, the mother-of-pearl has been fashioned into heart shapes and engraved with floral designs. Both have finely wrought silver work designs around the edge of the shells in a repetitive motif and flower, grape leaf and tendril designs. A silver central floral swag adorns the shell on the hair ornament, while a simple silver flower motif sits at the centre of the shell on the brooch.

Attrib. To CA Brown ‘Silver and mother-of-pearl shell brooch’ c.1890

Similar styled brooch & hair ornament

Often mounted in gold or silver, many forms of shell were used in Australian colonial jewellery manufacture. Torres Strait sourced mother-of-pearl, with its entrancing lustre and suitability for carving, was notably popular. The Queenslander of 25 August 1877, commented on CA Brown’s work shown at the Agricultural and Industrial Exhibition of that year: ‘Mr CA Brown has a glass-case set out with an extremely handsome collection, made exclusively of Queensland materials . . . Mr Brown’s display includes a very chaste collection of jewellery, in the manufacture of which trigonias, operculas, nautilus and other shells, together with pearls from Somerset, are made to show to great advantage set in gold and silver.’^[167]

CA Brown ‘Inkwell’ 1874

The QAGOMA Collection also holds examples of Brown’s silver and emu egg inkwells, the inkwell (illustrated) made in 1874, is the earliest surviving example of his work in a public collection, commissioned by the Hiram Masonic Lodge. The inkwell prominently displays a truncated emu egg among two distinctly Australian emblems fashioned from silver: a tree fern that supports the egg and a figurine of an emu that surmounts the ink bladder. A plaque on the inkwell’s turned wood pedestal is engraved with the details of the presentation.

CA Brown died on 5 September 1908 at age 58, his work is distinguished by its quality and craftsmanship, his mark ‘CA Brown-Brisbane’ or ‘CAB’.

CA Brown ‘Pair of inkwells’ c.1880s

Curatorial extracts by Timothy Roberts, QAGOMA Foundation Member and Michael Hawker, former Curator, Australian Art (to 1980), research and supplementary material compiled by Elliott Murray, Senior Digital Marketing Officer, QAGOMA

The silver and mother-of-pearl brooch c.1890 is on display within the Queensland Art Gallery’s Australian Art Collection, Josephine Ulrick and Win Schubert Galleries (10-13).

Endnotes

1. ^ Cavill, Kenneth, Cocks, Graham and Grace, Jack. ‘Australian Jewellers, Gold & Silversmiths, Makers and Marks’, CGC Gold Pty limited, Roseville, 1992, p.55.