Curator's Choice: 1930 School Certificate

From our archive comes a blank New Zealand School Certificate from the 1930s. Listed are all of the possible subjects then available to students. Nearly a quarter of them are technology based subjects suited to young males intending to sign articles for a five year industrial apprenticeship, with a further 20% tailored to the requirements of their eventual spouses to be.

Beyond compulsory English, a further six languages, including Mãori, offered graduation opportunities. Among them were Latin and Ancient Greek, and although the former might still be available in rare instances, by the later 1950s not even Christchurch's more exclusive groves of Academe offered Greek as part of their curriculum for a classical education.

Thus it was that a youthfull Mr CH would cycle down to Miller's Department Store in Tuam Street (currently the City Council offices) every Saturday morning, where Leslie Beaumont Miller (1890-1960) made his top floor staff cafeteria available as a classroom for serious lads hoping to learn sufficient Greek as to be able to enjoy Plato in the original.

Curator's Choice

Dating from the period between 1969 and 1972 is this dinner service by Crown Lynn Potteries of Auckland.

Represented here by a saucer and a dinner plate is pattern number 452, which was ornamented with a black on white map of Christchurch City. Known as the Down Town series, Crown Lynn also manufactured dinner sets featuring maps of the other principal cities of New Zealand.
An interesting progression of this concept has just come from the Los Angeles design store A+R, who have teamed up with the Japanese artist Nobuhiro Sato to produce trivets and coasters (above) that are individually cast from concrete and feature precise 1/1200 scale maps of Silverlake or Venice; the two homes of A+R in Los Angeles.

A possible emulation opportunity for a local of the arty-crafty persuasion...

Curator's Choice

This month's Curator's choices from the Canterbury Heritage collection are vintage luggage labels from Christchurch's most prominent hotels in the first half of last century.