Finding Marion Nicoll's Brooch

Calgary professor uncovers fascinating history behind jewelry long believed to be lost

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“Buttons,” Jennifer Salahub says.  

“As a kid, that was the treat I got to play with. I would sort them for colour or size but my mother would tell me the stories of where these buttons came from.” 

Starting with those simple yet omnipresent objects, Salahub, now professor emerita of Art and Craft Histories at Alberta University of the Arts (AUArts), has long had a deep interest in the history of objects and the people who fashioned them.

Marion Nicoll, for instance.

One of Alberta's earliest abstract painters, Nicoll was born and raised in Calgary, and died in 1985. She studied at Toronto’s Ontario College of Art (now OCAD University) in 1926, where her instructors included Group of Seven landscape artists Arthur Lismer, Frank Johnston and J.E.H. MacDonald. She then studied craft at the Central School of Arts and Crafts (now Central Saint Martins College of Art) in London, England. She taught at what is now the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and had a painting in a National Gallery of Canada exhibition that toured the world in 1936. The first full-time female instructor at what is now AUArts, Nicoll also has her name on a gallery at the Calgary art school.

“The American critic Clement Greenberg called her ‘one of the few artists on the prairies that was exciting,’” Salahub says.

“She ended up teaching, but never taught painting. She only ever taught craft.”

Nicoll’s crafting legacy has made Salahub’s interest all the stronger, given her own role as a craft historian and instructor. When a 2005 book by historian Nancy Townshend, A History of Art in Alberta 1905 – 1970, came into Salahub’s orbit, she happened to notice that it included a photo of a Marion Nicoll brooch entitled Plateau.

That small piece of jewelry turned out to have quite the history.

“This little brooch was made in the 1950s and it was selected by the National Gallery in Ottawa to be part of the very first fine craft exhibition in Ottawa in 1957. It travelled across the country, and then in 1958, it represented Canada and modern jewelry at the Brussels World’s Fair,” Salahub says.

“And it hasn't been seen since.”

Until Salahub found it, hiding in plain sight.

In 2021, Salahub was offered a tour of the Leighton Art Centre’s craft archives, southwest of Calgary. “I’m like a magpie looking for goodies,” she admits.  

The main focus was to be Barbara Leighton’s collection of metalwork, but a random drawer revealed a secret.  

“I know this brooch,” Salahub recalls saying, upon seeing what she knew was Plateau. “This is THE brooch. This is the case study I use in class about how craft has been overlooked. How can something that has gone to Ottawa, been to a major exhibition in Europe as a representative of Canada, yet nobody knows about it today? Nobody knows it’s missing!”

While Nicoll’s work was celebrated abroad, her work didn’t much interest audiences at home during her lifetime. Alberta of the 1950s, just 50 years into the new century, clung primarily to the safe images of its pioneer past. 

Even in the 1957 National Gallery of Canada exhibition catalogue has little detail, Salahub notes. It simply reads: “Mrs. J. Nicoll / Bowness, Alberta /Pin: sterling silver with glaze drips Plateau $50.00.”

Salahub says there are scant accounts of who, if anyone, collected Nicoll’s work, be it her paintings or her craft work, in those days. Yet somewhere along the way, this brooch ended up in Barbara Leighton’s collection — and it's on view now at the Leighton. 

“We are now able to share the results of Jennifer's research with our visitors as they encounter the brooch on public display in our museum,” says Christina Cuthbertson, Leighton Art Centre's executive director.

Was the brooch a gift from one friend to another? Possibly, Cuthbertson says. 

“Barbara Leighton and Marion Nicoll were lifelong friends, sharing many creative interests including jewellery design.”

Nicoll’s contributions to craft and design ignite a stronger argument for Salahub as she feels so much of craft work has been seen as less important by the art world, compared to, say, painting or sculpture. 

“Can we look at how painting or fine art has superseded crafts in the arts and crafts debate?” she says. 

“I hope that people will look a little wider and consider Marion's work with any artist’s work. I want my students, my friends, everyone to ask ‘what's the story?’” ■

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