Pendant

Born in Hanover, Germany, in 1942, Frank Bauer is an Adelaide-based jeweller, artist and designer. He is part of a group of émigré artists from Scandinavia and northern Europe who dramatically shaped art education in Australia in the 1970s. His father, Carl Bauer, was a Bauhaus-trained architect; Frank grew up surrounded by art and artists and immersed in the core idea of the Bauhaus school – that there should be no distinction between form and function.

Bauer is a master maker and comes from a European tradition of well-designed, meticulously executed metalwork. He learnt his craft as an apprentice in gold- and silversmithing with Carl van Dornick and Reinhard Rischke in Hildesheim, Germany, in 1962. A decade later, he relocated to Sydney and in 1975 moved to Adelaide to work at the recently established JamFactory. His Pendant from 1980 features a pyramid with a grid-like design, in which the negative spaces are as important as the structure, a recurring feature in Bauer’s work, which spans almost fifty years. Since the early 1970s he has produced a large body of work in metal, including jewellery, hollow ware, furniture and lighting.

Rebecca Evans, Curator of Decorative Arts & Design