Montsalvat, Artist collective in Eltham, Victoria, Australia.
Montsalvat is an artists' community on five hectares (12 acres) in Eltham, Victoria, with dozens of buildings including houses, halls, studios, galleries and stables. Residents built them from salvaged materials such as slate, fire bricks and fittings from the demolished Bijou Theatre. The grounds form a closed courtyard around an ornamental pond.
Architect and painter Justus Jorgensen founded Montsalvat in 1934 as a center for artistic collaboration in Victoria. The site quickly became an established gathering place for artists and maintained this role through the following decades.
Montsalvat takes its name from the Grail castle of Wagner's Parsifal and Arthurian legend; in Catalan it means "Saved Mount". Early residents built with adobe and pisé de terre after Arthur Munday researched the method in Pliny's writings at the State Library. Doors around the ornamental pond, funded by Helen Lempriere's family, came from students' bedroom cubicles, and their initials remain on each doorstep.
The site houses active artist studios, hosts regular exhibitions, music performances, and workshops for visitors. The grounds also provide spaces for private events and ceremonies of various kinds.
The initials of Montsalvat's first residents are still cut into the front doorstep of each former bedroom. Those cubicle doors now open onto the ornamental pond, built with materials and money donated by Helen Lempriere's family. Slate for the roofs came from a friend's demolished house.
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