Summary

The remains of a chisel retrieved by Bryan Poynton from the ruins of his Aireys Inlet workshop after the Ash Wednesday bushfires in 1983.

Bryan Poynton and his family fled their home in Aireys Inlet as the bushfires in the Otways raged through the forest and down to the sea. Bryan remembers in an interview in February 2018: "I had a chance to chuck my toolbox on somebody's car, get that out, and then the family spent the rest of the night in the water down at the beach closest, up to our necks. Luckily, it was a low tide and a calm sea, and we had t-shirts pulled up over our heads because embers were just dropping around us." He later returned to sift through the remains of his home and workshop. This is one of two chisels that Bryan retrieved from the ashes of his workshop and was kept by him as a memento and later hung on a wall in his new Benwerrin studio.

Bryan Poynton was born in 1939 in Geelong, Victoria and has mostly lived and worked in the southwest surf coast region of Victoria. He completed an apprenticeship in engineering patternmaking at International Harvester in Geelong. He worked as an engineering pattern maker with several firms. Although his trade was patternmaking, Bryan had always desired to do broader work in woodcraft. He applied his woodcrafting skills to musical instrument making, surf boards, furniture, house building (traditional adzing construction method) and artistic sculpture. While working in Footscray he also took evening classes in sculpture at RMIT (under Lenton Parr and Hermann Hohaus) and was taught how to carve faces and figures by ecclesiastical sculptor Leopoldine Mimovich. In 1981 he was commissioned to make a presentation box for the gift of silver platters for the royal wedding of Prince Charles & Lady Diana Spencer. But at the time he was not aware of its intended recipients. He also exhibited works at the Geelong Art Gallery.

Physical Description

Burned and rusted reamins of a chisel with a knotted rope attached.

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