Meet the maker: Blanche Tilden

 

Blanche Tilden has created and exhibited contemporary jewellery, glass and design since 1990. She is a celebrated master of her trade, highly recognized and respectednationally and internationally. 

Blanche graduated from the Canberra School of Art with a Bachelor of Art in Glass in 1992, followed by a Graduate Diploma of Art in Gold and Silversmithing in 1995. She went on train under renowned jeweller Susan Cohn.  

During 25 years of practice in the fields, I have developed a unique visual and material vocabulary through an innovative use of glass and metals, creating jewellery and objects that reference mechanical technology, industrial modernity and architecture,’ she says.  

Clever, intricate, beautiful, fascinating, stylish, unique, cool, elegant, timeless and versatile are just a few words that have been used to describe the jewellery Blanche Tilden produces. 

"It is the response of the wearer that makes my jewellery succeed for me,’ she says. ‘The connection that can develop once a necklace becomes precious to someone else, once it becomes part of their persona, their life, their experience, is the aspect of my practice that I value the most. 

Blanche has exhibited in solo exhibitions in Australia and significant group exhibitions in the USA, Hong Kong, Canada, NZ, Paris, Germany, Netherlands and Japan. Her work has been acquired by all major Australian public gallery collections, and international museum collections including the Corning Museum of Glass, Corning, New York and the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris. Blanche has received a number of awards including the inaugural ANU Stephen Procter Fellowship, the Pilchuck International Glass School Scholarship, and a State of Design Victorian Premier’s Design Mark. She has received project and development funding from the Australia Council for the Arts, Arts Victoria, Asialink, City of Melbourne and Arts ACT. She was due to hold a 25-year survey of her work at the Geelong Gallery this year, which has reluctantly been postponed to 2021. 

https://craftact.org.au/collections/blanche-tilden

Photos: Courtesy of the artist