Manchester Unity Building — Leonard Joel

Media item: article

Date published: 1 October 2012

This page records the media item. The original article is the property of its publisher and is not reproduced here.

Leonard Joel is a long-established Australian auction house. The archive preserves the headline and the date; no items, valuations or sale details are recorded here.

What follows is general information on the decorative arts of the period the building belongs to, and on moveable heritage — which is protected quite differently from buildings.

Art Deco as a decorative-arts movement

Art Deco was never only architecture. It began as a decorative-arts style and reached buildings later.

The name comes from the Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs et Industriels Modernes, Paris 1925 — an exhibition of objects: furniture, glass, ceramics, metalwork, textiles, jewellery and bookbinding. The buildings came second.

What the period produced, and what is collected:

• Furniture in exotic veneers, lacquer, chrome and tubular steel — geometric, low, emphatically horizontal
• Glass, both art glass and mass-produced pressed glass
• Ceramics, in bold geometric patterns and strong flat colour
• Silver and chrome tableware — cocktail shakers, tea services, cigarette cases
• Clocks and radios, often in Bakelite, which is the emblematic material of the period: a genuinely new synthetic, moulded rather than carved
• Jewellery, with strong geometry and contrasting stones
• Posters and graphics — travel, shipping and aviation, and the typography that goes with them
• Lighting — uplighters, slip shades and stepped fittings. On the building's own lighting, see Let there be light for Manchester Unity's brighter future and Manchester Unity all lit up again.

The unifying idea is the one that also explains the building: modern industrial materials and processes producing objects that still carry ornament. Moulded Bakelite and pressed glass do for a household what moulded faience did for a facade — they make decoration reproducible. The building's own cladding is described in Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 5.

Provenance, and why it is the whole of the value

Since the item concerns an auction house, this is the useful thing to explain.

Provenance is the documented ownership history of an object — where it came from, who owned it, and how it moved.

It does three jobs:

1. Authentication. A documented chain of ownership is among the strongest evidence that an object is what it claims to be. The Deco period is heavily reproduced, and for well-known makers the difference between an original and a later copy is frequently a question of paperwork rather than appearance.

2. Legal title. Provenance establishes that the seller has the right to sell. Gaps in a chain — particularly across the 1930s and 1940s in Europe — are treated seriously, and reputable auction houses research them.

3. Meaning. An object with a known history is a different object. A fitting removed from a named building, with the date and the reason recorded, carries information that an identical anonymous fitting does not.

Which is exactly why conservation practice insists on recording. When a building is altered, documenting what was removed, from where and when, is what turns salvage into heritage rather than into stock. See Manchester Unity Building — John Gollings, which sets out how a place is documented — and why the same logic governs a patient's dental records at Understanding Your Treatment.

Moveable heritage, and how it is protected

A distinction worth having, because it surprises people.

Buildings and objects are protected by different systems.

• A building on the Victorian Heritage Register is protected as a place. Works require a permit. See Our City: Manchester Unity Building.
• Objects may be protected separately — as registered heritage objects, through museum collections, or under laws controlling the export of culturally significant items.
• Fixtures versus chattels. Where an object is fixed to a building it may be covered by the building's registration; where it is loose it generally is not. A light fitting screwed to a wall and the same fitting sitting on a shelf can have completely different legal status.

This is the mechanism by which interiors are lost. A building's facade can be perfectly protected while its fittings, furniture, signage and light fittings are dispersed one auction at a time — legally, and often without anyone noticing until they are gone.

Where the interior is included in a registration, that is what prevents it. Not every interior of a listed building is protected; the registration specifies which parts are. What survives inside this building is described in Inside the Manchester Unity Building.

What this has to do with the building

The Manchester Unity Building was completed in 1932 and fitted out to a standard intended to signal permanence — marble, decorative metalwork, plasterwork, timber and integral lettering. Those interiors are Deco decorative arts at architectural scale, made by the same industries and to the same logic as the objects that come up at auction. See Manchester Unity Building and Manchester Unity Building — Penny Craswell.

And the same threat applies. Entrance halls and shopfronts are the most frequently altered parts of any commercial building, because tenancies refit and buildings do not. See Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 2 and Manchester Unity Building, Open House — part 3, and, for the arcade's opening, The new shopping centre opens today.

Elsewhere in this archive

• Art Deco oasis in the heart of Melbourne — Art Deco as a style, and how to read it
• Have a Deco at a Classic — the building's origins and its cladding
• Our City: Manchester Unity Building — how heritage protection works in Victoria
• Party time to mark milestone — the Oddfellows and friendly societies
• Barry Humphries gets his teeth into art deco beauty, The Manchester Unity Building — Costa Rolfe, Melbourne, Australia: Manchester Unity Building
• Mothers in Unity, Unity in Smiling: Suzanne Carbone
• Open House: Melbourne Open House, Part 1, Part 4, Part 6, Part 7
• The complete index is Our Media

Common questions

Is this building's interior actually protected, or only the facade?

Both, and the register says so in terms. Heritage Victoria's permit exemption policy for the place states that "the exterior and interior of the Manchester Unity Building are both integral to the significance of the place and there are few common areas that are not highly intact."

But the protection is not uniform, and the detail is where the interest lies. "The public areas and corridors retain a high level of integrity and changes to these areas are subject to permit." Individual tenancies are treated differently: on "tenancy units on floor levels two to ten", "all interior alterations, including decorative changes, refits and changes to internal layout are permit exempt" — because, in Heritage Victoria's own words, "many of the individual tenancy units (levels 2 to 10) have already been subject to alterations."

And then, inside that exemption, two objects are carved back out. Fitting locks is exempt, but "existing doorknobs with the Manchester Unity logo, and any original glass in doors are to be retained and consequently require a permit to be removed." A doorknob, named individually in a State register. That is what the fixture-and-chattel argument looks like when it is decided rather than debated.

What Deco objects does the register say are still inside?

A specific and unusual group, on the eleventh floor. Heritage Victoria records the former Manchester Unity offices and boardroom there, with walls "decorated with sliced timber veneer panelling", and describes the furniture in detail: "the boardroom table was constructed in situ and is nearly six metres long. The top is finished with a rosewood veneer and rosewood inlay border, and a moulded and carved edge. Twelve monogrammed leather chairs also survive." It adds that "it is likely that the table and chairs were also designed by Marcus Barlow's office, part of the total design of the building."

The register's own reasoning for why this matters is exactly the auction-house point in reverse: "the survival of a boardroom table of this scale and grandeur from this period, complete with chairs, is unusual in Victoria. They formed part of the total design for the building." A six-metre table built in place cannot be lifted out and sold as an object; twelve chairs can. The record also notes marble cladding used extensively inside, ground-floor lobby ceilings and cornices with high-relief depictions of Australian flora, fauna and industry, and corridor cornice panels on every floor "carry depictions of the friendly society's role in welfare provision."

Practical details

Smile Solutions, Level 1, 220 Collins Street, Manchester Unity Building, Melbourne VIC 3000. Phone 13 13 96, or theteam@smilesolutions.com.au. Monday–Friday 8.00am–6.00pm, Saturday 8.30am–1.30pm, Sunday by appointment. See also Our Location and Contact Us.

Every practitioner's registration can be verified free on the AHPRA public register at ahpra.gov.au.

This page records a published article and its date. No items, valuations or sale details are recorded, and nothing here is a valuation, an authentication or advice about buying or selling. The material above is general background rather than a summary of the item; for authoritative heritage information consult Heritage Victoria and the Victorian Heritage Database. The building is not a claim about clinical care. This is not a diagnosis or a treatment plan. Third-party published content is not reproduced.

Smile Solutions trades under ABN 28 193 514 103.