Would you wear a toad’s intestines? This young jeweller says you should

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Toad intestines don’t normally make for fine jewellery. Nor do amphibians’ vital organs. But in a macabre collection worthy of Morticia Addams, jeweller Samantha Dennis refashions and zoomorphises pearls and charms in works that question our value systems.

Nestling in the brass diaphragm of an elegant, clinically white, toad-shaped porcelain jewellery case are intestines made from pearls, flanking internal organs of gold and silver charms. Alongside the dissected toad is a menagerie of rats and pigeons form Dennis’ Anatomy Lessons series.

Samantha Dennis’ Anatomy Lessons I (2024).

“In Western society these animals are considered lesser or undesirable, dispensable or vermin,” says the Tasmanian jeweller and veterinary nurse. “I’m interested in what it means to make these hierarchies. In jewellery the materials also speak to hierarchies – porcelains, golds, pearls – these are [what] we consider higher materials.

Rigg Prize finalist Samantha Dennis creates jewellery that she says questions our value systems.

“It’s not a political statement. It’s just interesting the way setting and materiality can change our reaction to the same scene. The same type of animal on the side of the road, or in a vet clinic, or in a classroom, or in a museum, all [generate] different emotional and aesthetic reactions. So it was really just curiosity about that changing setting and how the museum specimen in particular has this sort of historically embedded power to shift our reaction to animals. I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with being uncomfortable. I just find it fascinating where we draw the line.”

Dennis’ dissected specimens appear in the National Gallery of Victoria alongside 34 other designers selected for the 10th Rigg Design Prize. Valued at $40,000, the award is Australia’s richest design prize. Since its inception 30 years ago, the non-acquisitive triennial event has focused on a different design discipline each time.

This year’s edition, which champions younger designers, was won by Alfred Lowe, a ceramicist from South Australia whose work is inspired by the Central Desert landscape. In his artist’s statement, Lowe describes You and me, us never part as a “declaration of love to my community”.

Alfred Lowe with his work You and Me, Us Never Part I, 2025, courtesy the artist and APY Art Centre Collective.

“We are awash with design prizes in Australia,” says NGV curator of contemporary design Simone LeAmon. “[The Rigg] probably stands out in Australia because it’s curated. You’re not seeking expressions of interest. You’ve got to go out and do your research. We’ve tried to identify talented, early career practitioners under the age of 35 who not only demonstrate a level of commitment, but they’re actually making contributions to their field. It might be a fresh perspective, it might be a highly experimental approach.”

Red Hill-based glassmaker Hamish Donaldson incorporates techniques spanning the pre-Christian arrival of glassblowing and contemporary stencils for sandblast etching. To obtain the rich colours in his Gnostalgia series, Donaldson, a third-generation glassblower, uses the Swedish overlay technique, folding one bubble of glass over another to shift colour to the outside of the glass. He’s fascinated by alchemy and his richly detailed glass bottles practically vibrate with powerful esoteric references.

Gnostalgia’s three bottles represent the triad of the alchemical universe: salt (the body), mercury (the spirit) and sulphur (the soul). At the top of each bottle are stylised Gothic windows and, between them, each substance’s alchemical symbol. “Temples have been a large inspiration for my work,” Donaldson says. “They’re places for humans to connect within themselves and with these unseen forces.”

Another unseen force – sound waves – are etched into the glass panels. “Sound’s very important [to the work],” Donaldson says. “It’s showing these beautiful patterns that are embedded beyond our perception, highlighting the beauty of the unseen.”

“Alchemists and glassmakers have always been closely tied.″⁣

Donaldson recognises that the glassmaking process itself carries an alchemical-like transformation. “Alchemists and glassmakers have always been closely tied,” he says. “All the alchemical work happens within a glass vessel. Glass in itself goes through quite a chemical process to reach its final form, transforming this base material of sand into an elegant glass piece.”

Material transformation threads through many of the works in the exhibition. Western Australia-based industrial designer Douglas Powell turns heavy metals into lightweight inflatable furniture such as the Luva chair and Mbosho table. Powell repurposes the industrial technique of hydro-forming familiar to car manufacturing. Where automotive manufacturers use heavy presses to ensure a uniform object, Powell allows for experimentation. He welds two thin layers of stainless steel and uses either air or water to inflate the envelope.

Douglas Powell with his Physalia vessel (2025).

“I’ll weld up the shape, polish it, and the very last step is to inflate it because that’s where the unexpected life and joy is thrown into it,” Powell says. “I can’t model this in a computer. It’s a constant experiment.”

Ceramicists Nathan Nhan (ACT) and Kohl Tyler (Victoria) also experiment with form and technique. Their understanding of process and the effects of adjusting variables such as object mass, kiln temperature and the amount of glaze, push the parameters of their craft. Nhan overloads his clay vessels to cave in under their own weight or amps up the glaze by pasting on pigments to create highly expressive personal forms reflecting his psychological state.

Tyler, meanwhile, describes her work as “futuristic artefacts”. Her series Vessels for the By and By “draw upon deep geologic time like fossilisation and the ephemeral nature of life continually shifting”. “In a world that’s full of mass production and really moribund predictions around our ecological collapse, I like to focus on how life might continue to change and thrive with or without us,” she says.

LeAmon says the Rigg designers “are emblematic of the type of designer-maker we find today. They’re not only obsessed with their material, they have a really elevated understanding of [its] historical legacy.”

Stories are inherent in all design, whether it’s personal stories such as Walter Brooks learning from his Tiwi elders to make traditional Tunga bags or the fictional narrative that informs Gold Coast-based industrial designer and sci-fi devotee Jay Jermyn.

Jermyn’s Veh standing lamp, with its LED tube petals, has “animistic qualities”, says LeAmon. “It is a deity you stand before. He’s thinking about a point in the future where beings made of these materials will be alive. Blue creatures made from 3D-printed anodised aluminium look like they’re feeding off ‘the mother’.”

A story of place informs Object Density’s Salt credenza. The Sydney-based designers created a mould of the porous beach stone at their coastal location to form the credenza’s glass panels. The anodised aluminium frame’s golden-green colour is achieved by using eucalyptus wattle dye.

“Never ever in a million years would you get a piece of furniture that looked like that unless you went on that journey,” LeAmon says. “How can I design a piece of furniture that could be an expression of place, produced through the very material of that place? And then you get that.”

Similarly, sustainability is intrinsic to these young designers. “If you are not at all engaged in a conversation around design and the environment, and design and impact, you’re probably not a contemporary designer,” LeAmon says.

Some designers wade more deeply into the waste stream. Tasmanian furniture designer Isaac Williams recycles the ubiquitous pine pallet used to transport goods across the country. “He’s looked at that waste stream and has learnt to work with that timber to celebrate it,” LeAmon says. “Rebirthed Pallet Dine looks like [it’s made from] Huon pine – it’s phenomenal.”

Rebirthed Cork Dine Chair (2025) by Isaac Williams.

If recycling timbers from wharves and building sites has become familiar, not all construction materials are appreciated equally. Sydney designers Second Edition’s Anywhere project recycles marble and ceramic bathroom materials.

“If we think about really big issues, think about waste and construction,” LeAmon says. “It just goes to landfill. These are architects going, ‘This is crazy, you can use half this stuff’.” To do so, Second Edition had to establish a system and a warehouse, she says.

“They’ve built a materials library. It’s a proposition for the building industry. Think of it as a beautiful prototype.”

Or, like all the designs, beautiful provocations.

The Rigg Design Prize 2025: Next in Design: 35 under 35 is at NGV Australia from September 19 to February 2026. Twelve of the designers will discuss their work at the gallery on September 20, from 11am-3pm.

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