Q1: This book was sparked by your beautiful 2022 book, also in partnership with John Walsh, Rooms: Portraits of remarkable New Zealand interiors. Tell us how.
Jane Ussher: My idea for Rooms was to photograph a variety of inspiring spaces that would acknowledge the depth and intelligence of New Zealand home owners and the way they curated the spaces they lived in. One of the first houses I visited was Olveston, which is a perfect example of just that. The Theomins were avid collectors with an adventurous and enquiring eye, and they curated an extraordinary house full of interesting and often exotic objects and art. The images I took of Olveston in 2022 left a lasting impression on me so when the opportunity arose to go back and document the house I leapt at it.
Q2: Apart from your famous assignment to photograph Scott and Shackelton’s Antarctic huts, have you ever spent as much time documenting one house? What was the joy of this job?
JU: It is a great gift to be given unlimited time and access to really study a space, and Olveston was the first time since my earlier work documenting the historic huts that I had been given that opportunity. The photography was spread over two trips and many days, so I not only had the time but was also able to revisit the house in two different seasons and see it in different light. I could also critically look at the early photography and see ways of adding or improving the images. This was essential as there was so much to see, and the break in the work added immeasurably to the success.
Q3: It must have been almost overwhelming entering each room and seeing just how much there was to capture, given the Theomins’ huge collection of paintings, furniture, ceramics, books and more. How did you plan each shoot and what were the challenges?
JU: I approached this book as I have approached most other assignments. My preference is to have a clear idea at the start as to how the finished book will look and in this case my publisher Nicola Legat and I mapped out a rough idea of how it would flow. This meant spending a lot of time in each room and deciding how to photograph the space and then working back from there. It also involved choosing details and complementary images as in a lot of cases two images faced and supported each other. The challenges were the lack of available light but also trying to introduce some of the tungsten light from the beautiful light fixtures. This was time consuming — and often amusing — as many inventive solutions were called for.
Q4: Do you have a favourite room?
JU: That’s a hard question as the house reads as a whole but the billiard room and the little card room off it were magic. One of the things that struck me about the house in general was its bold use of colour and texture.
Q5: It’s easy to become bewitched by what is inside Olveston and to perhaps pay less attention to the architecture of the house that contains it all. You give the architect, Sir Ernest George, detailed coverage. Tell us about him and this house.
John Walsh: At the turn of the twentieth century, Ernest George was probably the leading, or at least most prestigious, English house architect. Which, no doubt, is why David Theomin commissioned him to design Olveston. In 1903–04, when he designed Olveston, George was in his sixties but still going strong. He was the architect of some very ornate townhouses in London, but his specialty was designing large country houses for newly rich families. George understood his clients. He knew they wanted houses that, while having all modern conveniences, looked like they had been on their sites since Elizabethan or Jacobean times. The English could be snobby about wealth derived from manufacturing or commerce. George’s architecture gave recent fortunes a back story. George was highly skilled in drawing — he was elected a member of the Royal Academy of Art in 1917 — and his architecture was heavily influenced by his regular sketching tours of Europe. He would incorporate elements of buildings in German and Flemish towns in his designs and liked to mix and match styles to produce a picturesque and romantic effect. He was a very competent spatial planner, and also a full-service architect. Besides designing a house, he would specify and source the fittings, furniture and even artwork to go into it. George brought all his experience, sensibility and characteristic architectural traits to the design of Olveston, which was one of the few buildings he designed outside of England. (George never visited Dunedin — local architecture firm Mason & Wales supervised the construction of Olveston.) Although not as big as George’s English country houses, Olveston is similar in scale to some townhouses he designed in London’s Kensington district, and was large enough to accommodate live-in servants as well as the Theomin family. Olveston is distinguished by the Flemish gables on its more visible east and south sides, but also has Tudor-style battlements and chimneys and even a Venetian-style loggia at the rear.
Q6: There are so many grace notes at Olveston, all cleverly handled. What’s one that particularly struck you?
JW: The oriel window that projects from the house’s south side is pretty cute. On the east or front façade, name stones set in the Flemish gables are inscribed with David and Marie Theomin’s initials. A typical Ernest George detail on the same façade is the finely wrought rainwater head inscribed with the date — 1904 — of the house’s inception. Inside, on the upper level, the Orientalist card room is a whimsical annex off the predictably masculine billiards room. A little window in the card room peeps discreetly down into the Great Hall.
Q7: To think about Olveston is to immerse oneself in Edwardian Dunedin. What sort of place was it in 1907, when the house was completed and the family moved in?
JW: It was, for some, a Golden Age in the history of the city. Not for everyone, of course. Life wasn’t easy in the working class flatlands of South Dunedin, nor for Māori who had managed to cling on to some of their land on the Otago Peninsula. But times were good for affluent families, like the Theomins, who entertained lavishly in their grand houses on elevated streets such as Royal Terrace and Herriot Row. Dunedin had built upon the platform of the 1860s gold rush to become New Zealand’s leading financial and manufacturing centre. By 1907, the city was slipping inexorably down the demographic table — Auckland and Christchurch were more populous, Wellington soon would be — but Dunedin was still the home of many of the country’s best-known companies. For example, the Union Steamship Company, Hallensteins, Wright Stephensons, Kempthorne Prosser, the Rosslyn and Mosgiel woollen mills and David Theomin’s own Dresden Piano Company were all based there. Dunedin had a strong civic and provincial identity. Not surprisingly, given the Presbyterian flavour of its settlement, it could be quite moralistic — understandably, when it came to the endemic New Zealand problem of alcoholism. Edwardian Dunedin had a lot to be proud of: New Zealand’s first university and only medical school; two good public high schools — Otago Boys and Otago Girls; a busy port; a new railway station — New Zealand’s finest; the country’s first electric tram service; three daily newspapers; numerous cultural and sporting organisations; a growing although cautious trade union movement; at least one church for every imaginable Christian denomination, plus a synagogue in which David Theomin was a senior office-holder. And architecture — Dunedin had New Zealand’s best collection of substantial masonry buildings (many of them still standing). There was one other thing as well — a strong philanthropic impulse. Wealthy families, especially the city’s tight-knit community of Jewish mercantile families, were generous supporters of a wide range of charitable causes. They obviously believed privilege came with obligations.
Q8: You spent time at the Hocken library looking at Dorothy Theomin’s papers, especially to do with the extended periods she spent climbing in the South Island mountains. Tell us a bit about her alpine accomplishments.
JW: Dorothy was sporty. For several years she attended the English private girls’ boarding school Roedean, which emphasised physical exercise and participation in games. Dorothy played hockey when she was young, and golf for many years, and went horse-riding. But her true passion was mountaineering or alpine trekking. Her happy place was the Southern Alps, especially the peaks and passes around Aoraki Mt Cook and Franz Josef. From her teenage
years until well into her forties Dorothy would make annual summer trips to the mountains, often spending a month or two at the Hermitage at Mt Cook and Glacier Hotel at Franz Joseph, or in huts and mountain bivouacs. She employed the legendary alpine guides Alec and Peter Graham. They became her friends and with them she made many ascents in the Alps. Dorothy loved mountain life, and got an enormous sense of achievement from her
alpine expeditions.
Q9: Favourite painting at Olveston?
JW: It’s tempting to say Orange Seller, Tangier (1903) because it’s by Frances Hodgkins, but the painting that most appeals to me is Kapiti Island from Paekākāriki, painted by Wellington artist Nugent Welch, probably in the late 1920s. Welch was generally a conservative landscape painter but this work is simpler, stronger, more modern.
Q10: Most interesting discovery about the house?
JU: Being in the house is such an impressive and immersive experience. Just when you thought there was nothing left to surprise you another drawer was opened and another
treasure exposed.
JW: The bookplate in the books in David Theomin’s well-stocked library. The plate, drawn by Dunedin artist Mabel Hill, portrays a galleon approaching the watergate of the castle in Bristol, the English town where David was born. The motto on the bookplate is very Victorian: ‘Let things be done shipshape and Bristol fashion’. You can just imagine a successful merchant like David Theomin addressing the phrase to his clerks or warehousemen who, out of his sight, may well have been rolling their eyes at its familiar usage.
