Began Making Wine

This brooch is about Mary Penfold and was initially in a 2011 touring group exhibition called "Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Sailor" that celebrated significant Australian Women. Perhaps, because there are so few of Mary Penfold's early writings and letters extant, her understated diary entry, "Began making wine" seems all the more significant if not amusing in light of the business empire that she built. At the moment she wrote it, her prime motivation to 'begin making wine' was to provide a medicinal tonic to patients of her husband's. Market domination could not have been further from her mind. I became interested in the initial motivation at the beginning of Mary's journey – that is, the role of fermentation and mould in producing cures and health tonics. Is the modern preoccupation with hygiene in the form of 'antibacterial wipes' and 'germ killing sprays' reducing our immunity and disrupting the natural balance of life? Is there a place for furry growths in our fridges and has the role of fermentation in human nutrition been underappreciated in our sanitized world? The etched and patinated pattern on the shibuichi was derived from the eucalypt forests that her vineyards replaced, the twisted branches also evoking the mycelium of the moulds in the fermentation process that made her wines so beneficial. The piece has since been acquired by the Art Gallery of South Australia.