Stuart Devlin

Stuart Devlin's Australian animals emerged from a design process that began somewhere else entirely. Invited into the competition for decimal coin reverses in 1963, he first proposed industrial subjects. After their rejection, he turned to native fauna, linking the smaller denominations with the kangaroo and emu in the coat of arms on the fifty-cent piece. The participating artists met the judges regularly, discussing models and criticisms. His familiar series grew through that exchange rather than arriving fully formed. [S1] The platypus twenty-cent coin makes the result tangible. Introduced with decimal currency on 14 February 1966, it carries a design both drawn and sculpted by Devlin. The Royal Australian Mint records that the twenty-cent pieces in the initial 1966 issue were produced in London. A distinctly Australian image thus depended on an international production network. The denomination later accommodated commemorative reverses, while the platypus remained its standard design. [S2] Born in Geelong in 1931, Devlin trained in goldsmithing and silversmithing, receiving his diploma from the Royal Melbourne Technical College in 1957. His career connected the discipline of small metal objects with much broader design opportunities. In 1982 he received appointment as goldsmith and jeweller to Elizabeth II. He died on 12 April 2018. [S3] The National Gallery of Victoria's Surprise egg of 1978 reveals another side of that imagination. Made in London from silver, silver-gilt and enamel, with a steel spring, it opens to a frog on a lily pad. The museum's example is numbered 85 from an edition of 300. This carefully staged discovery differs from the immediate legibility required of a circulating coin, yet both make a recognisable animal the focus of a compact metal object. Devlin's achievement includes that range of encounters: a design repeatedly handled in ordinary transactions and a decorative object made to reward an owner's deliberate attention. [S4][S2]