Object: stories of design and craft

• Cinnamon Lee, metalsmith and jeweller
• Brian Parkes, CEO at JamFactory, Adelaide, South Australia
• Simone LeAmon, inaugural curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture at the National Gallery of Victoria

Show highlights and takeaways

[00:03] Secrets and hidden beauty

"Everybody likes a secret."

Cinnamon Lee introduces her philosophy on jewellery and the personal relationship between object and wearer. She discusses her practice of hiding gemstones – sometimes partially, sometimes completely – inside rings and other pieces.

[02:54] A young metalworker

Cinnamon describes how she discovered metalworking at age 17 through Enmore Design Centre, where her mother was teaching.

"Once I was in that workshop it was like I'd found my calling, which I feel really fortunate about because it happened quite quickly."

She spent the next decade studying and eventually teaching at the Canberra School of Art's Gold and Silversmithing workshop with Johannes Kuhnan and Ragnar Hansen.

"It completely changed my life, that workshop."

[04:47] Cinnamon's practice

Cinnamon explains that she creates both wearable objects (jewellery) and non-wearable objects (lighting), often using very precious materials.

[00:05:12] Winning the 2025 MAKE Award

Lisa congratulates Cinnamon on winning the MAKE Award, biennial prize for innovation in Australian craft and design.

"It feels especially meaningful given that I am now marking the 30th year of being a practising artist. So to have this recognition by the craft and design community is very special."

Cinnamon reflects on her long relationship with the Australian Design Centre, dating back to her first exhibition as a student in 1995 at the Crafts Council of New South Wales Space in the Rocks, Sydney.

[06:44] Noctua: the winning work

Lisa asks about the meaning of Noctua, and Cinnamon explains it's the genus name for a cutworm, a type of nocturnal moth, with the Latin translation meaning Little Owl.

The object is a hybrid creation – a slender standing lamp made of stainless steel, just over one and a half metres tall, with a cylindrical head containing the light source.

But it holds secrets:

"As well as being a lamp, it also contains a wearable brooch. So the wearable brooch sits into the lamp and is able to project a shadow onto the wall or any other surface, depending on where the lamp is situated. So it's a lamp and a sculpture and a piece of jewellery."

[08:12] The brooch: materials and technique

The brooch is made from titanium and silver in two layers, circular and about the size of a palm. Each disc has been hand-drilled with approximately 1,000 holes – 1.2 millimetre holes creating a grid.

"I love my drill press and it's just a crappy old drill press, but wow, it's drilled a lot of holes."

Instead of creating a simple spotlight, Cinnamon filled specific holes with tiny sapphires that stop the light from passing through.

"The shadow that is projected onto the wall is created by a whole lot of sapphires that form the silhouette of a moth."

[09:20] Why the Bogong moth?

"It was a moth that very quietly appeared around my home."

Cinnamon had previously created a series of brooches with flashlights projecting moths in 2023, using Australian sphinx moths or hawk moths. For the MAKE Award, she chose the Bogong moth for its humble, unassuming nature.

"It wasn't even as exciting as those hawk moths. It was such a humble, unassuming creature, but it represented something that was more than meets the eye in terms of its importance, because all insects are so important, but it also became an emblem of hidden beauty, which is really important in my work."

[10:57] Layers of secrets

Cinnamon describes the multiple hidden elements in Noctua:

"On one level there's the gems which are hidden in the brooch, which are not visible immediately. The brooch is hidden in the lamp, which is not necessarily visible immediately either. Those were the main two secrets."

She also explains the secret ways the object was made – all by hand at her bench, despite looking machine-made.

[11:32] Working without machines

Cinnamon's workshop has shrunk considerably over time, with reduced access to equipment.

"Pretty much everything I do is at my bench, but using hand tools. But I say I grew up on machines. I was trained with access to a whole range of machines."

She attributes her 'machine aesthetic' to Johannes Kuhnan's influence, noting she used to have a metal lathe but no longer does.

"The black cylindrical housing where the brooch fits into, of course, any normal person would just turn all of those components on a machine, but if you don't have one, you have to cut them all by hand with a piercing saw and file them all round."

[12:32] Hidden technical details

More secrets in the work include:

• Hidden magnets in the washer holding the brooch to the lamp
• Hand-cut threads
• An LED with a sterling silver heat sink
• The lamp structure itself conducts the electric current.

[13:32] Hiding the handmade

Lisa comments that, “too often we associate meticulousness with a machine-made work and the handmade, where it has its imperfections, we forgive because they're made by the hand, but you've actually taken this work in particular to another level and hidden the handmade."

Cinnamon says she likes to make her own “little physical challenges... to make it look like it could have been made by a machine, but it actually wasn't."

[14:13] Innovation in craft

Cinnamon discusses why she was excited to enter the MAKE Award, which acknowledges innovation.

She references listening to a previous episode of this podcast with Johannes Kuhnan, where he mentioned his professor Friedrich Becker "didn't allow anything through that wasn't innovative."

"I think I have also had that passed on to me from him, that idea that you should always, as a craftsperson and a designer, be looking to innovate."

"For me, innovation isn't simply trying something new. For me, innovation is – it's a way of thinking and it's about changing your thinking to be able to create and come up with something completely different."

"It's about not just being innovative for my own self, but to be innovative in order to provoke other people to think differently as well."

[15:33] Bringing two practices together

Cinnamon says that for this piece, she brought together the two sides of her practice to try to create something that she didn’t think existed before. The brooch is completely wearable by itself but has a secondary life in the purpose-built lamp housing, creating a new hybrid object.

[16:30] Judge's comments: Brian Parkes

Brian Parkes, CEO of JamFactory, discusses following Cinnamon Lee's practice for decades, noting she is one of the most accomplished makers in the country who has worked in lighting design and jewellery for the last 20 years.

He describes the work as both a brooch and a lamp, a sculpture and theatre, pixelated yet analogue, with interesting contrasts throughout. Every detail has been deeply considered, and the work combines technical proficiency with poetic sensibility, with a narrative informing every material and aesthetic decision.

"If you look at it really closely and inspect all the details, you'll see that every single thing, whether it's the fixings, the finishes – it's all been deeply considered. And that's the sign of an absolute perfectionist maker."

[18:23] Displaying jewellery

Lisa notes that Cinnamon's work provides a natural, beautiful way of displaying jewellery through a light source while not wearing it.

"It needs a house, it needs somewhere to live. So rather than putting it in a drawer or a box, or even just on a plinth, turning it into, well, allowing it to have another life was part of the thinking."

[19:03] The colours in the brooch

The sapphires in the brooch are a range of colours – peridot green grading to dark, dusty pink – a strange palette that Cinnamon had to use from her studio stock.

"Everyone thinks that they would shine colours onto the wall, but the way that they're cut, they're brilliant-cut sapphires. So the way that they're cut is in order to refract light back out."

The sapphires stop the light rather than transmitting colour, creating the shadow of the moth.

[20:21] Intentional setting

Cinnamon explains her unconventional stone-setting technique – the crown of the gems (the part you normally look into) faces inwards, so colours are only visible from inside the brooch.

"From the outside of the brooch, you only see the culet, which are the points of the stones, which means you barely see the gems. They just form like a very subtle sparkle."

[21:26] Indigenous story of the Bogong moth

Cinnamon shares an published Indigenous story she discovered in her research about the Bogong moth travelling to the snowy mountains to investigate the white snow, becoming stuck until the sun melted the snow and all the colours from her wings, creating the colourful mountain flowers.

"So I felt there was also a little nod to the possibility that the Bogong has got hidden colours in its wing somewhere. We just can't see them."

[22:12] Judge's comments: Simone LeAmon

Simone Leamon,  inaugural curator of Contemporary Design and Architecture at the National Gallery of Victoria, discusses the extraordinary nature of Noctua.

"It merges utility with poetry. It's a brooch, it's a lamp, it's a projector, but it is absolutely exquisitely realised in what I see as a product design."

She notes the Bogong moth's vital role in ecology and how heartbreaking it is that the species is endangered.

"I love the fact that this contemporary exquisite lamp, which is also kind of redefining jewellery in a sense, is also sharing a story, a very prescient story about an animal species which is so dear to us here in Australia."

[24:43] The importance of awards and the MAKE Award

Cinnamon reflects on how awards can be very important for artists' careers.

"I don't think that they should be the be-all and end-all of an artist's pursuits."

However, monetary awards can help develop new work, enable travel, and impact practice development.

"I think the recognition also can lead to bigger and better things. It's a personal recognition, I think, any time you get an award, but it also leads to opportunities."

[25:49] Judge's comments: Simone Leamon on awards, and the MAKE Award

"What I find really affirming with the 2025 iteration of the award is that across the materials and the disciplines, the award reminds us that the finalists are experimenting, they're pushing their skills. However, they're deploying their imagination. And of course, that's the magic trifecta when it comes to any designer."

"We cannot take for granted the role of awards such as the Make Awards. They play an absolutely critical role in our design ecology in not only fostering practice, but providing opportunity to platform excellence in design and make production on a national and international level."

[27:17] Judge's comments: Brian Parkes on the MAKE Award

"I feel very lucky to have been a judge for both the inaugural and this subsequent Make Award. It really is such an important award in our sector."

He says that JamFactory looks forward to showing the finalist exhibition later in the year.

"The MAKE Award is just another great example of the kind of work that the ADC does and the importance that it has in the national sector. It's provided a platform for so many artists, designers, makers over more than 60 years."

[28:02] Commissioning work from Cinnamon Lee

Cinnamon is represented by Courtesy of the Artist in Sydney and e.g.etal in Melbourne.

Both galleries stock her work and can facilitate commissions.

Congratulations to Cinnamon Lee on winning the $35,000 first prize in the Make Award, biennial prize for innovation in contemporary craft and design. View Cinnamon's winning work and all 36 finalists at makeaward.au

Credits

Object is a podcast of the Australian Design Centre. Object is produced by Jane Curtis, in collaboration with Lisa Cahill. Sound engineering is by John Jacobs.

The Story So Far is a major solo, touring exhibition that honors Helen Britton as the tenth artist in the series Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft.

Living Treasures recognises eminent Australian craftspeople, celebrating their mastery of skill, their achievements and the unique place they occupy in the national design culture. 

Featured works and excerpts

1. My Godmother's House

A set of 20 photographs taken in northeast New South Wales near Yamba on Yaegl Country.

 Over several years I took over 700 photographs. We've selected twenty for the exhibition. What was really fascinating for me were the collections within the house. Shell collections, stone collections, gathered objects and how they were arranged.

And then, of course, the path of time. So you'll often see the dust. I was very interested in photographing the the dust as a metaphor, the material reality of time passing.

2.  The Mysterious Path of Matter and Time

A small cabinet framed by branches.

 A work made out of my childhood detritus [using] a cabinet that I made about 30 years ago, and cement branches.  The cement branches does give it a ritualised, almost relique object-like atmosphere, which is what I was trying to achieve.

It's also in the true sense of the expression cemented into eternity.

Cement is a very interesting material because it is so stable and has such a long life. And it's an ancient material, which I think we also tend to forget.

3.  Junkyard Three

A monumental necklace made of many parts.

 I've created a piece using absolutely everything I could find leftover in my studio, and put it together. I've used the circle and bone catch for many years. For me, it is an interesting way to close a necklace, a circular necklace, with these two symbols.

And the rest of the pieces in Junkyard Three are often leftovers from my industrial series. Works preoccupied with the kind of environment that I grew up with in Newcastle in the 1970s and early eighties where BHP was kind of at its peak. For example, all of the barrels and rods that you would see lying around on the periphery of industrial areas.

4.  The Magic Cupboard

 When I was told I was to be the Living Treasure of Australian Craft, I decided to create a kind of 'cabinet of wonders' that included everything going back to my early childhood, the things that kind of triggered my imagination over all of those years. And include archival works.

On the bottom shelf, there is a porcelain plate painted by my godmother that she made that as a gift to me. She was very interested to make something not conventional, because she thought I'd appreciate that more. It's quite a dynamic drawing of geckos.

On the top shelf are a pile of airplanes made by my brother.

In the drawer, some of my dolls, put to rest.

5.  The Big and The Small Things

A large wall piece of paintings and jewelry depicting animals and bones.

 I guess the bones make this work much more sombre. They're often... what's left over. After we've eaten an animal or what's left over from us, they are what we find often on the ground or along the roadsides of Australian highways.

Whilst I don't want, I don't want to be specific about what to the bones mean, it does give this work a certain gravity.

6.  Wisdom's Despair and Wisdom's Blindness

One is a broach, one is a drawing. Both of owls.

 Wisdom's Despair is a large drawing. We have an owl sitting on a burnt branch, looking over either a desert or a sea. It's acrylic and ink on paper.

Wisdom's Blindness is an owl sitting on a branch with enormous, diamond eyes. The owl figure was based on a childhood trinket broach that came out of a chewing gum machine.

 I see this as one work. They're not two separate works. It is a kind of diptych. And thematically it is about reflections on environmental ruin.

7.  The Story So Far monograph

Presenting Helen's extraordinary, often colorful and playful works.

This is an artwork in its own right. It was created for this exhibition, and it includes a huge amount of detail about the works that you'll see in the exhibition. In addition to this, it covers my practice for the past 40 years.

About Helen Britton

Helen Britton is a multidisciplinary Australian artist based in Munich, Germany.

Her practice includes jewellery, sculpture, drawings, stencils and installations, and is informed by popular culture, threatened traditions, environmental destruction and human anxiety.

The Australian Design Centre honoured Helen as a Living Treasure in 2025.

About Living Treasures

Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft is an initiative of the Australian Design Centre. The series aims to celebrate the achievements of Australia’s most iconic crafts practitioners, through a touring exhibition and a major monograph publication.  

Read about Living Treasures on the Australian Design Centre website.

Credits

Object is hosted by Lisa Cahill, and produced by Jane Curtis.

Sound engineering is by John Jacobs.

Object is made on Gadigal Country.

Julie Ewington is a writer and a curator and sometimes a broadcaster living on Gadigal land in Sydney.

Show highlights and takeaways

Childhood in Newcastle [00:05]

Growing up in working-class Newcastle exposed Helen to industrial processes that became foundational to her art. "We were taken as tiny children to the BHP and we watched them pour tonnes of molten steel... Watching this steel for making ships being poured... It was fairly impressive." These early experiences with molten materials and manufacturing processes sparked her lifelong fascination with material transformation.

Creative making was everyday life [5:00]

Helen's mother encouraged constant making. "You'd spend your weekend, doing stuff making things, gluing things together, sewing things, not necessarily always practical things." Her grandfather was a blacksmith who even shod horses for the Australian Olympic team, embedding craft traditions deeply in family life.

Making material connections[6:00]

Helen was drawn to understanding material processes from start to finish. "Thinking about the connection between the grass and the cow, and the milk and the butter and the ice cream that was made. This was really important to me as a child. I loved making those connections in my mind."

Helen's Godmother's house [7:00]

At her godmother Kath Carr's house on Yaegl Country near Yamba, Helen painted porcelain, pressed flowers, and made jewelry with polished stones. "There was never any hierarchy of what you did, it flowed from one activity to the other. And I think that was incredibly formative for me as an artist."

Comprehensive art education foundation [10:00]

Helen completed 12 years of university education across Newcastle, Sydney, and Perth. At Edith Cowan University, she did "13 hours a week for three years" of life drawing, plus printmaking, textiles, painting, photography, and cultural studies - building a thorough technical foundation.

Julie Ewington's discovery moment [11:00]

Curator Julie Ewington describes receiving Helen's master's degree work: "A beautiful wooden little box... with 15 or 20 objects each in their own little compartment... mostly broaches... unexpected combinations of things like pearls and plastic, silver and tin. She's no respecter of conventional value."

Research drives material choices [14:00]

Helen's material selection comes from deep historical research. "I get fascinated by certain, often objects or practices or geographical locations and their histories. And so I will then go and find out about them. I'll research them."

Glass birds led to Thuringia discovery [14:20]

A chance encounter at a Munich Christmas market with glass ornaments led to exploring the 500-year history of glassmaking in Thuringia's forests. Glass makers settled there in 1497 after being "driven from through one of the many wars out of Bohemia" because the region had "forests, sand and water" - everything needed for glassmaking.

Long-term process [17:00]

Helen's research and creative process happens over many years. Describing her work in Thuringia, "I started in 2001, researching there... And I couldn't make work about that experience until 2007. And then subsequent exhibitions around the glass animals happened in 2009, 2018, 2020 2021."

Materials carry their own stories [18:00]

For her Thuringia work, Helen chose "glass, rusted metal and cement" because these materials could tell the history: "the long history of glass making in that region; the dilapidated factories that were scattered through the forests; and the Soviet occupation, which left behind a plethora of cement structures."

Humble, human stories [19:00]

Helen is drawn to stories of working people rather than "big epic stories" from museums.

"Often more humble stories or stories that are from working people... often of ephemera or ephemeral practices that are poorly documented but incredibly human."

Managing an overactive imagination [25:00]

Helen describes her creative challenge: "My job is to try and sort a kind of completely overactive, constant barrage of imagination and ideas that are in my head at all times... it's actually quite stressful." She creates parameters and structures to manage this creative intensity.

Parameters as structure [26:00]

Helen uses journals and creates specific parameters: "It has to be related to specificity, whether it's geographical, historical material, often a combination of those three things in one place" - like "the forests of Thuringia; the beaches of Australia; Limoges where I recently did a major new porcelain project."

Advice for artists [28:30]

Helen's core advice is: "Just be really courageous. Stay off your phone and don't care what other people say. Have a good plan B, that's also really important." She emphasizes the financial reality: "It is incredibly difficult to live from one's work... it is really tough... not to be afraid of having a job to keep you financially stable."

International impact of Living Treasure recognition [29:30]

The Living Treasure award has significant global resonance. "People are really impressed by the idea that there is an Australian Living Treasure series... it has a huge international resonance" with colleagues from different countries reaching out to learn about the program.

About Living Treasures

Living Treasures: Masters of Australian Craft is an initiative of the Australian Design Centre. The series aims to celebrate the achievements of Australia’s most iconic crafts practitioners, through a touring exhibition and a major monograph publication.  

Read about Living Treasures on the Australian Design Centre website.

Credits

Object is hosted by Lisa Cahill, and produced by Jane Curtis.

Sound engineering is by John Jacobs.

Object is made on Gadigal Country.

Johannes Kuhnen is one of Australia's most well recognised silversmiths. Johannes' practice has remained at the forefront of innovation, in particular his pioneering use of anodised aluminium. A fascination with the colour options of the aluminium continue to provide inspiration for his work and have also inspired many others to explore such potential.

Guests

• Johannes Kuhnen
• Jason Smith, Director and CEO of Geelong Gallery, Victoria
• Hyeyoung CHO, Chair of the Korea Association of Art and Design, and expert panel member of the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize
• Brian Parkes, CEO at JamFactory, Adelaide, South Australia

Credits

Object is a podcast of the Australian Design Centre and is made on Gadigal Country in Sydney, Australia.

It's hosted by CEO and Artistic Director Lisa Cahill and produced by Jane Curtis, in collaboration with Lisa Cahill. Sound Engineering is by John Jacobs.

• Csilla Csongvay
• Matt Blackwood
• Jason Smith, Director and CEO of Geelong Gallery, Victoria
• Hyeyoung CHO, Chair of the Korea Association of Art and Design, and expert panel member of the Loewe Foundation Craft Prize
• Brian Parkes, CEO at JamFactory, Adelaide, South Australia

Credits

Object is a podcast of the Australian Design Centre and is made on Gadigal Country in Sydney, Australia.

It's hosted by CEO and Artistic Director Lisa Cahill and produced by Jane Curtis, in collaboration with Lisa Cahill. Sound Engineering is by John Jacobs.