Marian Hosking

Jeweller Marian Hosking makes silver brooches, necklaces and vessels that are translations of the Australian bush. Hear why Marian thinks that souvenirs are underrated; the reason she still makes brooches and how she co-founded the iconic Melbourne open access jewellery space, Workshop 3000.

Marian Hosking is an award-winning artist, and is former Head of Jewellery at Charles Sturt University, The Riverina College of Advanced Education and Art Design and Architecture at Monash University.

Marian Hosking collects, draws or takes photos of Australian plants and flowers to make silver objects like brooches, necklaces and vessels. She often oxidises and heats the silver to blacken it. Using techniques of drilling and sawpiercing, Marian's work is delicate but strong, detailing fragments of the Australian bush.

The Australian Design Centre honoured Marian as a Living Treasure in 2007.

Marian lives and works on the ancestral lands of the Boon Wurrung people, on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria.

Guests

• Katie Scott is the Director of Gallery Funaki. www.instagram.com/galleryfunaki
• Su San Cohn is the co-founder of Workshop 3000 and is one of Australia's finest jewellers and metalsmiths. She is an Australian Design Honouree and represented by Anna Schwartz Gallery.

Show highlights and takeaways

The Australian bush isn't all the same [4:04 mins]

For Marian, the Australian Bush is never the same. She likes to draw attention to something you think you know, like an ordinary gum leaf, and isolate a single element or a particular quality.

In the first lockdown, Marian thought there was no point in making [4:38 mins]

When Melbourne and regional Victoria went into extended lockdowns in 2020, Marian thought, "There's no point in making anything because there's already too much of everything in the world. And making things is just a waste of time and space."

She stopped making for a time, but kept up with other parts of her practice, like closely observing nature, sketching and taking photos of local plant and bird life.

Swans got Marian making again [4:54 mins]

Lockdown restricted movement to 5km from your home. Luckily for Marian, she could regularly visit the Tootgarook Swamp, a peat regenerating wetland on the Mornington Peninsula that's home to birds, animals and frogs.

"And I noticed the swans, the black swans. I've worked over a number of years with swans, in England and Australia, the black and the white. These swans and little baby cygnets were just so appealing." Marian has just finished a vessel depicting these swans and credits them for getting her making again.

Rejecting 'sentimental' as a derogatory term [6:28 mins]

"In fine art terms, being sentimental or a souvenir is often a derogatory term," Marian says. "Actually what I do is both souvenir and sentimental. And I really value both of those aspects of my making. I love the souvenir."

She says another reason that jewellery is