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Reginald Wilfred (Bill) Rowed

Contents 1 Introduction 2 Early Life and Education 3 Immigration to Australia 4 Career 5 Personal Life and Interests 6 References

Introduction Reginald Wilfred Whiting (Bill) Rowed (28 September 1921 - 30 September 1992) was a Czech born gold and silversmith who emigrated to Australia in 1950 and taught at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) from 1955 to 1983. It has been said that 'his contribution to Australian jewellery was made as the lecturer in charge of gold and silversmithing in Australia'.[1]

Victor Vaclav Vodicka circa mid-1950s Early Life and Education Vodička was born in Modřany, a southern Prague neighbourhood in Czechoslovakia to Josef and Františka nee Klovrza who had a small farm at Na Beránku. His only sibling, Jiří, was born four years later in 1925. His father died in 1929 before Václav's seventh birthday.[2] Vodička attended the local primary and secondary schools and in 1941 graduated from Prague College of Industrial Arts, specialising in gold and silver design and manufacturing.[3] He later attended the prestigious State School of Jewellery in Turnov in 1942 and 1943. After graduating, he worked for a large firm of gold and silversmiths in Prague before moving to Jablonec nad Nisou (Gablonz an der Neiße) in 1946 as the national manager/designer of the Robert Scholtze company, an expropriated Sudeten German costume jewellery manufacturing company. He also appears to have freelanced as a jeweller and lectured part-time at the Jablonec School of Applied Arts at this time.[4]

Immigration to Australia After the Second World War, Vodička was active in democratic politics, supporting President Edvard Beneš and his Czech National Social Party (Czech: Česká strana národně sociální, ČSNS) in the only free post-war elections in Czechoslovakia (until 1990), which was held in May 1946; and the Sokol movement, an all-age gymnastics organisation long associated with Czech nationalism. Both the ČSNS and the Sokol movement were suppressed during the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia and the later communist regime. After the political situation deteriorated in Czechoslovakia following the communist coup in February 1948, Vodička decided to flee Czechoslovakia, 'illegally' leaving the country for Germany in September 1949 with a colleague and immediately making his way to the British occupation zone in Berlin. Branded an 'enemy of the people's government' and charged with bogus crimes, he would not be permitted to return to Czechoslovakia until the late 1980s, never seeing his mother and brother again.[4]

Vodička spent Christmas 1949 in Charlottenburg, Berlin with fellow Czech refugees, which also included his nineteen-year-old first cousin, Miloslav (Milan) Vodička who would also emigrate to Australia.[5][6][7] By the end of December 1949, he had made his way to Hanover where he was officially granted political refugee status under the auspices of the International Refugee Organisation and gained admittance to the Friedland Refugee Camp.[8] In mid-January 1950, he moved to the Fallingbostel Displaced Persons Camp for the purposes of emigrating to Australia. By February, permission to emigrate to Australia was granted. On 16 March 1950 he boarded a train to the Bagnoli Displaced Persons Camp in Italy and on 31 March 1950 left Naples on the USAT General M. L. Hersey with 1,335 other European refugees bound for Australia, arriving in Melbourne on 27 April 1950. After arriving in Australia, he spent about three weeks at the Bonegilla Migrant Camp before returning to Melbourne to take up work.[9]

Career In the first few years after arriving in Australia, Vodička had a number of jobs, mainly as a silversmith at a range of companies that included Davenite Plate Company in Faraday Street, Carlton; makers of fine silverware; Stokes and Sons Pty Ltd, metalware manufacturers; Phoenix Manufacturing Company Pty Ltd and then Albion Metalware Pty Ltd, gold and silversmiths. Early on, he began using a name Australians could pronounce and became known as Victor or Vic Vodicka rather than Václav Vodička. When he applied for the position of instructor in gold and silversmithing at Royal Melbourne Technical College, later RMIT University, he used the name Victor Vaclav Vodicka - he was appointed in August 1955. [1]

According to Vodicka, gold and silversmithing at RMIT went back as far as 1927 ‘when the art-metal certificate was established on a part-time basis’. He had inherited a tiny but established course that had produced capable graduates, and he built from there. In the succeeding years, Vodicka 'transformed gold and silversmithing at RMIT into the leading course of its kind in Australia'.[3] His vision 'right from the beginning...[was] to develop and build up a School of Gold and Silversmithing or at least Department...which would have silversmithing, jewellery, engraving, enamelling and gem cutting and possibly gem engraving divisions'.[1] Vodicka’s first Diploma students graduated in 1957 with the most famous being Geelong-born Stuart Devlin. Devlin was a 'precocious talent' and 'there was very little that Vodicka could have taught him, as is clear when we compare his graduating piece...with the standard fare of other students'.[3] After numerous awards and scholarships Devlin went on to design Australia’s decimal currency that was introduced in 1966 and afterwards became one of the most successful goldsmiths in Britain, where he lived for the rest of his life.[3]

In 1958, Emily Hope,[10] the daughter of poet, A.D. Hope, and Margaret Goldthorpe became the first women to enroll full time into the course.[11] Notes in Vodicka's archive list the projects the students could embark on in 1960, covering flatware, holloware, tableware, a ‘television lamp’ and jewellery pieces such a necklace, pendant, ring, bracelet and brooch.[12] Although Vodicka had included jewellery in the course he saw himself primarily as a silversmith so in 1960 he was able to obtain funding for a part-time jeweller to teach the evening classes. Wolfram Wennrich,[1] a highly accomplished goldsmith who had received his training in Hamburg after the war, took on this role becoming full time in 1963.[3]

Between 1962 and 1964 Vodicka doubled the intake of students, while reducing the numbers of part timers. Concurrently, the ambition and standard of work produced by the students leapt ahead. Throughout the 1960s, Vodicka expanded the course with more specialised subjects: design in 1963 and history of gold and silversmithing in 1964. His archive holds an illustrated typescript of a history of goldsmithing and silversmithing which suggests he contemplated publishing a text book for students. In 1969 a subject ‘research in methods of production’ was introduced in third year. According to Vodicka, this subject included a dissertation at the end of the year which ‘considerably improved the standard of the course and influenced the design generally’.[3]

In 1962, W.E. McMillan, a friend and admirer of Vodicka’s work at RMIT, instituted an acquisitive award for outstanding student work and in 1966 Vodicka held a student competition to design a medal for the winner of the McMillan prize. The W.E. McMillan Collection inspired other acquisitive awards and together they represent a unique record of almost 60 years of student work at RMIT. Students were also encouraged to enter the Made in Australia Awards. The Vodicka archive lists student prize winners from 1965 and 1966 for named prizes with monetary awards, and entry forms for these competitions from the 1960s and 70s indicate the ambitious benchmarks set for the students.[3]

In 1967, Vodicka organised the first student exhibition at RMIT's Art Department’s Building 2. It contained work made over the previous five years, Governor General Lord Casey and Lady Casey visited their exhibition during a brief stay in Melbourne, generating considerable publicity. In 1968 there was an exhibition at jewellers Paul Bram.[3]

Vodicka kept up with contemporary gold and silversmithing and maintained a small practice undertaking commissions for RMIT and external clients including such known works as:

Silver lamp - circa 1950s: Made for College of Nursing; Baptismal font - circa 1961: Frederick Romberg’s Lutheran Holy Trinity Church, Canberra;[3] Silver Madonna pendant - mid-1950s: Made for his wife; Costume jewellery souvenirs for the Melbourne Olympic Games - 1956: Made under the company name of ARTIKO Jewellery and Silverware; Gold brooch - circa 1960: Made for Lady Brooks, wife of General Sir Dallas Brooks, Governor of Victoria;[1] Fruit Dish with inscription - 1965: Presented by RMIT to W.G. Smallman for distinguished service as the President of the Council of RMIT; Three-arm candelabra - date unknown: Made for Doctor and Mrs E. Steele; Chalice with black onyxes - date unknown: Presented to Reverend L. Thomas on his consecration to the priesthood; Rose bowl with crystals - circa 1966: Exhibited at 'Europeans: Emigre Artists in Australia 1930 - 1960', National Gallery of Australia, 15 March -9 June 1997,[12] and RMIT commemorative plate - 1971, copper, enamel, 15.4 cm diameter: RMIT Design Archives: Victor Vodicka Collection.[12] During the 1970s and early 80s, Vodicka undertook a number of study tours and prepared reports that included:

Report on an occupational survey and research into craft industries in Australia: conducted under the Educational Research Grant of the Advisory Committee on Advanced Education;[13] Report of a study tour of South East Asia 1977/78: Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology,[14] and Report of a study tour of the United Kingdom and Europe 1981: Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology[15] Graduates from the Vodicka and Wennrich years included Raymond Stebbins,[16] Australia’s first Professor of Gold and Silversmithing, Howard Tozer, an expert enameller who led the teacher-training program at Melbourne State College; Norman Creighton and Rex Keogh, who were influential in the formation of the Meat Market Craft Centre in Melbourne in 1977; Robert Baines, who has played a major role in Australian gold and silversmithing since his graduation from RMIT in 1970; and Marian Hosking, who, like Baines, is a ‘Living Treasure: Master of Australian Craft’. They have been followed by other significant practitioners all building on the legacy of Victor Vodicka and Wolf Wennrich.[3]

Vodicka did not achieve his ambition of a School or even a Department of gold and silversmithing but he developed his course to levels of specialisation, professionalism and scholarship that equipped his graduates to head most of the gold and silversmithing courses and other similar positions throughout Australia.[1] He retired from RMIT in 1983 and in 1987 was honoured as a Member of the Order of Australia for his service to the craft of gold and silversmithing.[17]

Personal Life and Interests In 1953, Vodicka married an Australian, Nancy Gloria Stanley Ward;[18] they divorced in 1971. He was naturalised as an Australian citizen in 1956.[19]

In the late 1950s, Vodicka rekindled another passion from his native home that was to remain a cornerstone interest for the remainder of his life. Becoming restless and homesick after nearly a decade away from Czechoslovakia, he was introduced to the pleasures of skiing and bushwalking in the Australian high country by fellow RMIT lecturer and Second World War artist, R.W. (Bill) Rowed. Rowed who became a life member of the Wangaratta Ski Club, having joined shortly after the end of the Second World War, has its lodge at Mount St. Bernard near Mount Hotham in the Victorian Alps.[20] In 1959, Rowed invited Vodicka to the club and he joined it shortly afterwards in 1960. Both men were foundation members of the Mount Bogong Club, which was formed in 1965 to promote the safe recreational use of Mount Bogong, Victoria's highest peak, and to maintain the Cleve Cole Memorial Hut and the Michell Refuge. For nearly four decades, Vodicka joined Rowed on cross country ski trips to the Victorian high country in winter and bushwalking and other social activities during the summer months.[21]

During the 1960s, Vodicka, by then a father of three young children - Sonya, Peter and Mark - all born in the mid to late 1950s,[2] continued with his education, completing a Tertiary Technical Teachers Certificate in 1963 and a Fellowship Diploma in Art/Industrial Design - Gold and Silversmithing from RMIT in 1967. He was an active member of the Czech community in Melbourne being a co-founder of the Czech Language School established at the Technical Teachers College, Toorak in 1963.[2][7] He was also a regular visitor to the Sumava Centre[7] (now Sumava Peksa Centre) at Belgrave in the Dandenong Ranges, founded by the exiled priest Josef Peksa, and was involved in the Czechoslovak National Association and the Prahran Slavia soccer club.[2]

Vodicka was eventually able to return to his native Czechoslovakia in 1987 after the communist regime withdrew the bogus criminal charges that had been laid nearly forty years earlier.[4] He visited again in 1991 after the collapse of communism in November 1989 and even got back his long withheld Czech passport. However, in September 1992 he passed away in Melbourne due to acute myeloid leukemia.[22] At his request, his ashes were spread on his beloved Mount Bogong.[2]

References

Butler, Roger (ed.) (1997). Margaret Vine, 'Jewellers and Jewellery: European trained, made in Australia', The Europeans: Emigre Artists in Australia 1930 - 1960. This book accompanies an exhibition of the same name held at the National Gallery of Australia, 15 March -9 June 1997. Canberra: National Gallery of Australia. pp. 199–203. ISBN 0-642-13061-2.
"Vaclav Victor Vodička". www.ancestry.com.au. Retrieved 2019-11-30.
Edquist, Harriet (2019). Victor Vodicka and the post-war transformation of gold and silversmithing, in Melbourne modern : European art and design at RMIT since 1945. Melbourne: RMIT University. pp. pp. 31 – 40. ISBN 978-0-648-42265-5. OCLC 1105927723.
Václav Vodička, Státní bezpečnost or StB Files: S-2688-LBC; STB USTI NAD LABEM, T-461: SEO VOS FMV
Miloslav Vodicka (digitised) File, National Archives of Australia, A12036, 881.
Track to Rum Jungle. Arthur H. Stockwell. 1970. ISBN 9780722300732.
Cigler, Michael. (1983). The Czechs in Australia. Melbourne: AE Press. pp. 89 109. ISBN 0-86787-201-2. OCLC 19751825.
I.R.O. British Zone - Certificate of Eligibility, 30 December 1949 in Vaclav Vodicka Files (digitised), National Archives of Australia, A446, 1955/52332; A12025, 1215; B78, CZECHOSLOVAKIAN/VODICKA VACLAV.
Vaclav Vodicka Files (digitised), National Archives of Australia, A446, 1955/52332; A12025, 1215; B78, CZECHOSLOVAKIAN/VODICKA VACLAV.
Katherine Emily Hope was born on 19 February 1940 in Sydney, New South Wales. Her father was the renowned poet, A.D. Hope. She was an accomplished artist, sculptor, jewellery maker and writer. She died in 1979 in Kew, Victoria, at the age of 39.[1] [2] [3][4][5] "Emily Hope: a visionary artist dies". The Canberra Times. 53 (16, 034). Australian Capital Territory, Australia. 18 August 1979. p. 11. Retrieved 2 December 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
"There's gold in their fingertips". The Australian Women's Weekly. 28 (1). Australia, Australia. 8 June 1960. p. 15 (Teenagers' Weekly). Retrieved 2 December 2019 – via National Library of Australia.
Victor Vodicka collection, RMIT Design Archives. Victor Vodicka’s archive was donated by his son Peter Vodicka to the RMIT Design Archives in 2018.
Vodicka, Victor V (1972), A report on an occupational survey and research into craft industries in Australia : conducted under the Educational Research Grant of the Advisory Committee on Advanced Education, Victor Vodicka, retrieved 3 December 2019
Vodicka, Victor V; Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (1979), Report of a study tour of South East Asia 1977/78, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, retrieved 3 December 2019
Vodicka, Victor V; Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (1982), Report of a study tour of the United Kingdom and Europe 1981, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, retrieved 3 December 2019
Trained in the early sixties, Emeritus Professor Ray Stebbins established the Jewellery and Metals program at Melbourne Teachers College in 1969. In 1978, he undertook a Masters Degree at the Royal College of Art in London. He headed the Metalcraft department at Melbourne State College from 1981 to 1984, when he moved to RMIT and headed the Gold and Silversmithing programs at RMIT University until 1997. In 1991 he was appointed Australia's first Professor of Gold and Silversmithing. https://australiana.org.au/resources/magazine_issues/90_May_2001_Vol_23_No_2.pdf
Vodicka, Victor Vaclav (1987). "Member of the Order of Australia". honours.pmc.gov.au. Retrieved 2019-12-02.
State of Victoria, Australia, Marriage Certificate, Number 10803, 13 June 1953 https://www.bdm.vic.gov.au/
Vodicka, Victor (1 November 1956). "Certificate of Naturalization". National Library of Australia.
Osborne, Bruce; Callander, Bill, 1905-; Wangaratta Ski Club (1980), Snow on St. Bernard : the Wangaratta Ski Club jubilee book, 1930-1980, Wangaratta Ski Club, retrieved 4 December 2019
Bill Rowed leads friends across the Eskdale spur at Mt Bogong to celebrate his sixtieth birthday in the Cleve Cole Memorial Hut, Mt Bogong, Victoria, 1976, 1976, retrieved 4 December 2019
State of Victoria, Australia, Victoria, Death Certificate: Victor Vaclav Vodicka, Registration No. 25072/1992. https://www.bdm.vic.gov.au/

December 2019

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