Nellie McCredie

Nellie McCredie (1903—1968) was an Australian architect and potter. One of her works Uanda is listed on the Queensland Heritage Register. Her artworks are held in a number of major Australian galleries.

Early life

Nellie McCredie was born in Sydney in 1901, the daughter of Robert Smail McCredie and his wife Nellie.

Career

Nellie McCredie was a member of a leading architectural family with associations with Queensland as well as New South Wales. She was the niece of well-known Sydney architects Arthur Latimer and George McCredie who from 1889 to 1893 opened a Brisbane office, as McCredie Brothers and Chambers. Nellie McCredie's cousin, Leith C. McCredie, was also an architect and worked in the 1920s in the Sydney firm of Robertson and Marks.

Nellie McCredie graduated with a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Sydney in 1923, one of Australia's earliest architectural graduates. After graduating, she worked briefly for Dorman, Long and Company, contractors for the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Later she worked with several unidentified architects in Cairns for about 10 months, then came south to Brisbane where she was employed from November 1925 to early 1929 as a Draftswoman in the Workers' Dwellings Branch of the State Advances Corporation. It has not been possible to identify any of the work produced by the Workers' Dwellings Branch as work by McCredie as government drawings of the period were rarely signed by their designers. It was during this time that she designed Uanda as a private commission.

Nellie McCredie was concerned with improving the quality of life of the average Australian. In her Bachelor of Architecture thesis she advocates simple, chaste buildings in "appropriate" settings generously planted with trees, illustrating her ideas with "a pretty suburban cottage" not unlike Uanda in its symmetry, central entrance porch and simple hipped roof. In her preference for simple, classic buildings McCredie reflects the ideals of her university teachers, including Professor Leslie Wilkinson.

Like many of her women contemporaries, her practice of architecture was not to be sustained. Having studied pottery in Brisbane under the master craftsman, LJ Harvey, McCredie returned to Sydney in 1932 where she became a professional potter, setting up a commercial pottery at Epping in partnership with her younger brother Robert Reginald (Bob) McCredie. She exhibited actively with the New South Wales Society of Arts and Crafts into the 1950s and in 1951 won the Society's Elizabeth Soderberg Memorial Award for pottery. Pottery by the McCredies is well regarded for its simplicity and craftsmanship. It is represented in five public collections in Australia: National Gallery of Australia, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Powerhouse Museum (Sydney), Art Gallery of South Australia and Shepparton Art Gallery.

Uanda is currently the only identified work of architect and potter Nellie McCredie. The career of Nellie McCredie is typical of the careers of women who entered the architectural profession prior to World War II. These early women architects were rarely able to sustain their careers and as a result, examples of their work are extremely rare. Only three Brisbane buildings, including Uanda, have been identified. The other two were designed by Elina Mottram who practiced in Brisbane from 1924 to 1926.

Later life

Nellie McCredie died in Sydney in 1968.