Dr Dorothy Erickson was awarded the Member of the Order of Australia in the Australia Day2024 Honours list for significant service to jewellery design, and to the arts in Western Australia.
In 2020, Dorothy was inducted into The Design Institute of Australia, Hall of Fame, and received Curtin University's Lifetime Achievement Award. The Royal Western Australian Historical Society conferred a Fellowship on Dorothy Erickson in 2019 and she won the 2017 WA Heritage Award (Individual). Her book Inspired by Light and Land: Designers and Makers in Western Australia 1829-1969, was shortlisted for the Premier's Book Award in 2016.
Dorothy Erickson AM (Phd, UWA 1992) is a significant researcher, writer and art critic in her own right. She has four books published to date, including: A Joy Forever: The Story of Kings Park (2009); Gold and Silversmithing in Western Australia: A History (2010); Inspired by Light and Land: Designers and Makers in Western Australia 1829-1969 (2014) and A Passion for Silversmithing: PHILIP NOAKES: Gold and Silversmith (2019) to her credit.
Dr Dorothy Erickson AM has been exhibiting at Artsite since 2011, and is represented in numerous public and private collections both in Australia and Internationally.
Dorothy has been immersed in the unique flora that is Western Australia's heritage for as long as she can remember. Erickson grew up on a farm at Bolgart. Her paternal grandfather had a goldmine and her mother was the naturalist, wildflower painter and author Rica Erickson. She studied botany as part of a teaching degree and the 1960s saw her enrolling at the Chelsea Institute in London while researching Australian plants at Kew Gardens and the Natural History Museum, South Kensington.
Her interest in the minutiae of nature has never waned and in researching the book, A Joy Forever: The Story of Kings Park, she turned her attention to wildflowers as a subject for her jewellery. Following her mother's death in 2009, many pieces were based on Rica’s paintings.
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, ACT
Schmuckmuseum, Pforzheim, Germany
Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK
Curtin University, Perth, WA
Art Gallery of Western Australia, Perth, WA
The South Australian Art Gallery, Adelaide, SA
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane, QLD
Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery, Launceston, TAS
The Powerhouse Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences, Sydney, NSW
Methodist Ladies College, Claremont, Perth, WA
The Holmes à Court Collection, Perth, WA
Inge Asenbaum Collection, Dallas Museum of Art, USA
Wendy Ramshaw Collection, London, UK
Alice and Louis Koch Collection, Swiss National Museum Zurich, Switzerland
National Fine Arts Museum, Valletta, Malta.
Australia, U.S.A., Canada, UK, Europe, China, Japan, Namibia and New Zealand.