This was published 7 years ago
Ben Hall, musical instrument maker, artist and architect
Ben Hall was an architect and also a recognised painter who could make and play musical instruments, teach classical guitar and design and make houses, furniture and jewellery. In fact Ben Hall's life was packed with creative pursuits. Some might say he attempted too much.
He was the firstborn of Cyril (known as Bill) Duncan Hall, a country dentist and Mavis Raines who had studied piano at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, before marriage. She encouraged her son to learn the piano from "the nuns" in Dubbo; an unsuccessful and terrifying episode, which resulted in an aversion to musical tuition for years.
The range of instruments Ben Hall could create expanded after he made his first lute from drawings in 1966.
Dubbo-born John Duncan Hall was nicknamed Ben when he attended Scots College in Sydney but he was always John in his birthplace. Painting was his great passion and he received tuition from Roland Wakelin in his studio in George Street during the boarding school years. Art school was not even considered a possibility by his parents and his next move was to the University of Sydney and Wesley College where, briefly, he followed in his father's footsteps studying dentistry. He then switched to arts/law for a year and finally settled into architecture where the emphasis on art and the Lloyd Rees studio seemed the right fit.
After graduating there was a spell at an architect's office in Wagga Wagga then back to Sydney to work before sailing to Europe in 1960 with two other graduates from his year. A car tour of all the classic and great architectural sites and galleries followed.
Ben Hall in his workshop fine tuning a guitar, one of his many creative talents.
Back in Australia in 1963 he tutored in architecture at the University of Sydney, continued studying classical guitar and produced paintings and drawings for an exhibition at the Barry Stern Gallery.
In 1964 he went to London again, following then marrying Diane Wallis, a Sydney copywriter, whom he'd met six weeks before her voyage to Britain. Architecture claimed him again and he worked at Richard Sheppard, Robson & Partners when the practice was heavily involved with the design and construction of Churchill College, Cambridge. Before returning to Sydney via Spain later that year, he visited London harpsichord maker, Thomas Goff. Unable to afford a lute himself, Goff invited Hall to measure and record one of his lutes; a generous gesture by Goff who built lutes for celebrated guitarist and lutenist, Julian Bream.
On the dining table of rented accommodation in Woollahra, he made his first lute from the drawings of Goff's instrument in 1966.
Winning the Royal Aeronautical Society Art Prize helped purchase a house in Forest Lodge and Hall gave classical guitar lessons as well as teaching architecture.
Then there was a house in Woollahra with a workshop in Coogee followed by a move to the Blue Mountains and the construction of a studio and workshop. In the mountains Hall was awarded a Churchill Fellowship to visit museums in Europe and England to measure and record lutes and other early-music instruments. Stephen Murphy joined him on "the lute route" in 1974 and they both established contacts with specialist timber merchants in Germany and Britain.
Back to Sydney and Newtown in the early '80s, an amicable divorce after 16 years and a large residence/studio/workshop was established within what had been a canvas factory where instrument building and painting continued apace.
An Morison and young daughter Isa Coello joined Ben in the "factory" in 1995 where they lived and worked until 2013. The instrument range expanded. As well as lutes and guitars there were now theorbos, vihuelas, chitterones, viols, cellos and mandolins. Most of the production in recent years has been guitars and they combine the brilliance and flute-like clarity of the old Hauser and Bouchet guitars with the response and volume of the best cedar lattice tops. Much time was also devoted to developing an overall design avoiding gratuitous embellishments.
Then another era: the sale of the factory and a move to a renovated terrace house in Alexandria with a separate workshop/studio for Ben and studio for An, a jewellery maker.
As well as instrument making, Hall continued to paint, exploring the Australian landscape as his prime subject. There were corporate commissions that had to be executed in manageable pieces and assembled in foyers of large buildings. With many solo exhibitions to his credit at galleries including Access, Brenda May, New England Regional Art Museum and the Orange Regional Gallery, he is represented in New South Wales by Janet Clayton Gallery.
What couldn't he do? Singing wasn't a strong point. And he wasn't much of a dancer. His greatest strength was a single-minded devotion and focus to a considerable spread of career paths and enthusiasms, which may sound contradictory, but that was the man.
At the close of his funeral at Northern Suburbs Crematorium, everyone was invited to step up to a table of paints, brushes and oil pastels and decorate his plain coffin. This they did with great enthusiasm and joy – a colourful send-off.
Ben Hall is survived by An Morison, his sister Leonie Crawford, children Julian Duncan Hall and Hannah Mercedes Hall and five grandchildren. His life will be celebrated in early February at a gathering at the Janet Clayton Gallery, Paddington.
Diane Wallis