Aluminum’s Precious Past : Bonita Campbell and William Freeman collect ‘Depression silver’ gift ware, furnishings and jewelry. The items are part of a CSUN exhibit.

True collectors can’t seem to collect just one thing. While they search for anything from antique toys to swizzle sticks, they stumble upon unrelated items that pique their interest. Before they know it, a simple curiosity shifts into a passionate desire to collect.

Such has been the story of Bonita Campbell and William Freeman--she an engineering professor, he a speech communications professor at Cal State Northridge--since they married in 1990. Campbell’s hunt for Victorian garnets--which ensued after a burglar stole her great-grandmother’s garnet pin--led the couple to plunge into the joys of collecting Depression glass.

In September, 1993, they presented about 200 pieces from their collection in the CSUN exhibit, “Glassware for the People: Depression Glass, 1929-1939.”

One of Campbell’s research sites for Depression glass was her mother’s china closet. While she combed through it, an aluminum serving tray her mother had received as a wedding gift caught her attention.

Thus Campbell and Freeman began their immersion into the world of domestic and commercial furnishings, gift ware and jewelry made from aluminum.

“I am the prime flea market buyer of aluminum,” Freeman said with the pride of someone ahead of the pack.

Although they own just hundreds of pieces, they said they have handled hundreds of thousands.

But unlike some collectors who hoard without inquiring, Freeman and Campbell have also delved into the largely undocumented legacy of this Machine Age craft “in the intensive, obsessive way only an academic can do,” Campbell said.

One can appreciate their scholarship and collecting acumen in the exhibit, “Depression Silver: Machine Age Craft and Design in Aluminum,” on view in CSUN’s Art Dome.

Campbell and Nan Curtis, a CSUN art history graduate student, curated the show of 174 pieces from Campbell and Freeman’s collection and from several other collections in Southern California, Maine, Pennsylvania and Texas.

The title “Depression Silver” comes from the fact that aluminum furnishings and decorative objects “came into being in part because of the Depression,” Campbell said. Aluminum was inexpensive. “It was 1932 and 1933 and it looked like silver. The gift shops on Manhattan loved it because people could afford to buy it.”

Ironically, aluminum was once more expensive than gold.

“Although aluminum compounds are present in virtually every object on earth, the metal itself was not isolated until the early 1800s,” says Campbell’s catalogue accompanying the exhibit.

Throughout most of the 19th Century, it was the extraction process that made the metal so costly. In 1852, aluminum sold for $545 a pound.

“The ‘wonder metal’ was held in such awe that the 1855 display of an aluminum ingot at the Paris Exposition and the 1884 display of the aluminum pyramid for the top of the Washington Monument drew large and admiring crowds,” the catalogue says.

“It was a precious metal, long-lasting like the father of our country,” Campbell said.

With the discovery of a cost-effective extraction process in 1886, the price was dramatically reduced to 57 cents per pound by 1892.

After World War I, things made of aluminum became increasingly more available, thanks largely to the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA).

In 1930, ALCOA built a new research lab, with one of its goals to come up with high-end gift ware and furnishings lines. By the start of the Great Depression, two different schools of design in aluminum had emerged.

Bauhaus-influenced modernists such as Russel Wright produced streamlined objects with the new metal that was so suitable to mass production.

“It’s strong yet lightweight, it doesn’t rust and has other anti-corrosive properties. You can shape it (working) it cold,” Campbell said.

The second school, the antithesis of the modernists, adapted traditional hand metalworking techniques. Individuals such as Arthur Armour and Natale Rossi, and the Wendell August Forge are associated with this school. Others in the field such as Frederic Buehner, Simon Farber, Nathan Gelfman and Louis Schnitzer wed the two approaches in the production of their wares.

The CSUN exhibit displays pieces by all of these and other designers and metalworkers. It contains everything from picture frames, plaques, matchbox covers and jewelry, to bowls, trays, candlesticks, chairs, a serving cart and a communion set.

Most of the pieces are from the 1930s and ‘40s, and were produced from dies that were made before World War II.

Many architectural elements made of aluminum “bit the dust during World War II aluminum drives,” Campbell said. “Aluminum was a strategic metal. It was confiscated for airplanes and other war materials.” Some of those who worked in aluminum were either thrown out of business or their production capacity was turned over to making war materials.

“In today’s wonderful world, you say the word, ‘aluminum,’ and you get no reaction at all. But during a particular era and unique to this country, there was a real fascination with aluminum,” Campbell said. “A range of people developed new technologies with it, a new field of industrial design.”

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WHERE AND WHEN

What: “Depression Silver: Machine Age Craft and Design in Aluminum.”

Location: CSUN Art Dome gallery, Music Lawn 236, near Nordhoff Street and Lindley Avenue, Northridge.

Hours: Noon to 4 p.m. Monday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Tuesday to Friday. Ends

May 26.

Call: (818) 885-2156.