By kind permission of Electric Egg
Rhea Reclining (2008)
Rhea was the Greek goddess of female fertility, motherhood and regeneration, a beautiful motherly figure believed to rule over heaven and earth.
She represented the eternal flow of time and generations and was also a goddess of comfort and ease, a blessing reflected in the Homeric phrase ‘the gods who live at their ease (Rhea).’
‘I pray thee, clear-voiced Muse, daughter of mighty Zeus, sing of the mother of all gods and men. She is well-pleased with the sound of rattles and of timbrels, with the voice of flutes and the outcry of wolves and bright-eyed lions, with echoing hills and wooded coombes’.†
In art, Rhea is usually depicted seated on a throne flanked by lions or on a chariot drawn by two lions, or holding a wrapped stone, here she is depicted in the act of reclining.
‘One of three figures depicting the Creation Dance of Rhea, carved in 2007, the artist, Caroline Matthaei used a variety of processes, including electroformation, shell moulds of the sculptures, made from copper, ‘Jesmonite’ and paper to demonstrate the sphyrelation; the name given to Etruscan and Minoan repousse work shaped by beating heated sheet copper over wooden forms’. According to Matthaei, this process could serve as a design model for contemporary artists and crafts persons to follow.
About the Designer
Caroline Matthaei (1953 –)
Born in Germany and educated in Stuttgart and Frankfurt, Caroline studied Jewellery Design in Stuttgart before qualifying as Journeyman Goldsmith in Frankfurt. She settled in Britain in 1978, working part-time as jewellery maker developing techniques in repoussage, and in brass and copper working. In addition to membership of Harding House Maker’s Cooperative and Lincolnshire and Humberside Contemporary Crafts Network, Caroline was elected a member to the Society of Designer Craftsman in 2005. Caroline is a lecturer in applied art at Lincoln University.
By kind permission of Electric Egg