National Gallery Centrepiece
Melbourne, Australia
National Gallery of Victoria
Competition 1986
In 1986, Denton Corker Marshall won first prize in a competition run by the National Gallery of Victoria to design a silver table centrepiece.
The design explores the contemporary centrepiece as an organising element for a table setting. It consists of three thin parallel tubular wedges in silver, 1,200mm long, supporting a tray and various abstracted forms made from sheets of silver plate and anodised aluminium. A vase and salt and pepper pots are incorporated, and the base can support a range of other items. The silver wedges, inlaid with a grid of flush monel dots, rest on randomly strewn coloured aluminium sticks.
The result is an architectural object of poetic shapes and cantilevering sculptural forms, rather than a recognisably domestic one. It is part of the National Gallery of Victoria’s permanent silverware collection.
