The Gang swung by Sharon Cornthwaite’s Bird on a Wire Studio in Bega last Friday and boy! were we bowled over by the utter chaotic charm of it all. We’re talking the ultimate in ‘cottage industry’ here – a hive of creative activity housed in a daggy little weatherboard cottage, marooned in the midst of a car parking lot just off the main drag in Bega. Unassuming, unpretentious – just our cup of tea.
You walk off the street into a workshop bursting with an eclectic jumble of tat (it doesn’t hurt that all the ‘stuff’ is right up our alley, aesthetically) and immediately feel right at home, especially if you’re a dedicated collector of vintage kitsch. In a former Melbourne life the Gang was addicted to the Camberwell market/Zucchini Sisters/Greville St/and every-Op-and tat-shop-in-between, and so Shazza’s joint is full of exactly the sort of stuff we used to hone in on ourselves. It’s literally chock-a-block with delicious nostalgia – all being wrought into her Car Dog Design label’s signature, often quirky, jewellery. This is AbFab territory; a mélange of vintage materials contemporised into fashionable wanna-haves, with the broadest product range imaginable (from subversive to disarmingly sweet to high-end sophistication.) There’s sumpin’ for everyone – and we love it.
And what a great little set up! Even the bars on the windows are cool – they’re made from the old communion rails from St Pat’s (just up the road, where Sammy Jo and Ginger went to Primary School.)
Anyhoo, Shazza and her studio crew are hard at it at the moment making a mountain of treasure for the upcoming Floriade (where she’s booked a stall for the first time) and her regular weekly gig at the Bus Depot Markets in Canberra and her interstate outlets (including the NGA)…in between all of which she continues to teach (in-house) and run workshops for local arts’n craft outreach programs. It’d be fair to say she’s hardly idle. But the thing that strikes you most is the sense of happy purpose that permeates the place. These guys genuinely enjoy what they’re doing and it clearly translates into the finished work.
It’s not just the passion – it’s the fun factor that does it of course; that one integral ingredient that turns every working day into a real pleasure. [Hey man, that’s the holy grail right there. n(Ed)])
For a Cook’s tour of the workshop, go here.
And there’s a website coming soon…
glass central canberra 
