Ancient Glories

TREASURES: Canterbury University's Logie Collection is a celebration of the ancient world

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Penelope Minchin-Garvin admits to being nervous when carrying the family china across the room to be photographed.

White cotton gloves firmly in hand, total concentration on the job and a clear passage are essential when the curator carries a 6th century BC Greek Attic black figure cup across a few brief, seemingly endless metres of carpet. However often Minchin-Garvin does it, she still takes precautions - removing all obstacles, ensuring the table is clear and mentally rehearsing each step before even removing the object from its display cabinet.

Each of the antiquities surrounding her working day are unique, precious, beautiful - and utterly irreplaceable.

"It's still a slightly frightening experience. I plan where I'm going to put it. I don't get distracted and I plan every move. When I first arrived as curator, we had to pack up the entire collection in order to install a new air conditioning system. It was an interesting experience," Minchin-Garvin says.

Welcome to the University of Canterbury's Logie Collection, arguably the southern hemisphere's largest and most important collection of classical antiquities. From its beginnings as a modest teaching collection in the 1950s, the Logie Collection has emerged as an extraordinary collection of nearly 300 Greek, Roman and Egyptian ceramics, sculptures, coins and manuscripts spanning 2000 years. The vivid human spirit of the classical world emerges from objects from the Early Bronze Age to Greece's Mediterranean colonies, ancient Egypt and Rome's empire.

The importance of the Logie Collection has been highlighted with this month's release of a 405-page illustrated catalogue by the emeritus professor of classical archaeology at the University of Sydney, Professor Richard Green, one of the world's leading experts in the classical world and a man who has known the Logie Collection throughout its life.

The collection ranges from pottery intended for the home and workshop to elegant painted ceramics intended for the dining rooms of the wealthy. Many would eventually hold the ashes and bones of their owners as objects for the tomb. Others would be used at symposiums, serious drinking and social networking parties, where large kraters, or mixing bowls, for wine, water and honey would be prominently displayed.

Following in the footsteps of the ancient world, the collection even has a genius loci, a presiding spirit. It must be that of Marion Steven, the woman who created the collection in memory of her husband, the registrar of Canterbury University College from 1950 to his death in 1956. James Logie had bequeathed his collection of Greek pottery to the university.

Marion Steven built on these items, arranging the acquisition of other pieces. With other pieces loaned by the Canterbury and Otago museums and the Robert McDougall Art Gallery collections, what was primarily a teaching tool began to include treasures like the Stilt Amphora, created in Athens during the 6th century BC. Today the amphora, with its vivid depiction of five men on stilts (according to Prof Green, members of the chorus in an early Greek comedy), is the best-known object, and is about to travel to California to be shown at an exhibition at California's John Paul Getty Museum.

The alert faces and scenes from the ancient world bring the remote past alive. We know the names of some of the artists - Douris, Hermanox, Onesimos - men who signed their names with a deliberate pride. Some of the objects carry cheerful messages. "Hail and drink well from me," one Greek artist wrote on an elegant kylix, or drinking cup.

"Inscriptions meant that a potter could ask for more money. If both the potter and the buyer were illiterate, then he'd attach a line of nonsense. These people had an amazing sense of humour," Minchin-Garvin says.

"The people who created these pieces were nothing if not human. In the context of a gallery, the ceramics have become works of art, but originally they would have been used in everyday life. These are still reminders of domestic lives."

The Logie remains a vital teaching tool - apart from tertiary students, more than 600 high school classics students visit the collection annually - but there is also an increasing public appreciation of the artistic value of these antiquities. Nothing is new. Even in the ancient world, they were regarded as highly prized works of art.

"One Greek piece was obviously broken in antiquity and carefully repaired with a small clip," Minchin-Garvin says, pointing to a nearly invisible metal band running down the painted folds of a woman's tunic.

"While some of these works were owned by individuals who could afford to pay three to four days' wages for a single piece, the rest of the population would use plain black ware."

But human nature being what it is, there was a market for the imitation and the fake.

"This Etruscan pot appears to be plain black, but it was originally highly polished to resemble silver. Even in those days, you might not be able to afford the real thing, but you could afford a knock-off."

* The Logie Collection: A catalogue of the James Logie Memorial Collection of classical antiquities at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch. J R Green. Photographs by Duncan Shaw-Brown. Hardback. Illustrated; 405 pages; $120.

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