They say necessity is the mother of invention and for Maude Wordsworth James, the necessity was money and the invention was a particular type of souvenir – ‘Coo-ee’ jewellery.
At the time that she developed her jewellery range in 1906/07, Maude was living in a weatherboard cottage in Kalgoorlie after the family – civil engineer Charles and their three children – had successfully upgraded from their initial tent accommodation. “When I lift up the curtains and go in, I feel as though I should immediately proceed to execute a skirt dance,” she wrote of their canvas dwelling in 1897, “and invite my children to enter in spangles and tights on top of a bare-backed steed. And that my husband, instead of toiling at tiresome plans and tedious surveys, should be unrolling a piece of carpet, preparatory to a tumbling scene in the programme.”
Although they were now able to afford some housekeeping help, Maude decided the time was right for her to earn an income and, with no previous experience, she set about designing, patenting and organising the manufacture of a souvenir line of jewellery that she named ‘Coo-ee’.
Incorporating Australian fauna, flora and indigenous motifs, Maude registered designs for brooches, bangles, rings, cuff links, pins and trinkets made from Australian gold and featuring tourmaline from Kangaroo Island, opals from Queensland and pearls from Broome, all stamped with the word ‘Coo-ee’, usually in a clearly visible position.
Her most ambitious idea was for every house to have a ‘Coo-ee corner’, complete with a clock that featured a mechanical Aboriginal with a boomerang in his hand who emerged to cooee the hour and half hour.
The first exhibition of Maude’s new range was in Perth in December 1907, backed up by an advertisement in the Australian Jewellery Manufacturing Gazette that advertised the ‘Coo-ee’ jewellery manufactured by the Melbourne jewellers Johnson & Simonsen. Designs included the word ‘Coo-ee’ combined in various ways with boomerangs, the Southern Cross and a map of Australia, but the cleverest was the pearl-set snake looped to read ‘Coo-ee’.
The exhibition was reviewed in the February 1908 issue of The Australian Manufacturing Jewellers’ Watchmakers’ and Opticians’ Gazette: ‘One of the most interesting exhibits in the art section of the exhibition, being held in the Exhibition Building East Perth is a case of ‘Coo-ee’ jewellery. The idea is a very novel one … The collection shown at the Exhibition includes brooches, lace pins, rings, bangles, sleeve links, and trinkets. In most of the brooch designs the boomerang is conspicuous, embellished in many instances by the addition of tiny jewelled kangaroos or laughing jackasses. Other brooches noticed take the form of a snake, composed of Broome pearls, with eyes of tourmaline, a boomerang of tourmaline and pearls, and the Southern Cross, the word ‘Coo-ee’ appearing in the stars. There are also plain gold bar brooches, bearing the word ‘Coo-ee’ in relief, and the same word set in pearls, all attractive specimens of the designer’s art.’
It didn’t take long for Maude to expand her ‘Coo-ee’ franchise. She wrote and copyrighted songs and jokes and registered the word ‘coo-ee’ as a trademark in Australia, the UK and New Zealand; in 1916, when the Heidelberg District Volunteers’ farewell social committee struck coo-ee medallions, Maude felt she was entitled to demand royalties (she wasn’t).
Her musical score My Coo-ee was published in Melbourne in 1908 and in 1913 a pamphlet listing 17 songs written by Maude was published in Adelaide. The Coo-ee Call, which was a book of all the coo-ee songs, was published in 1917 and during WWI Maude gave concerts performing her own songs: the coo-ee had been enlisted as a call to arms and no coo-ee could go unanswered.
womenaustralia.info/entries/james-maude-wordsworth/
Australiana Society February 1993
National Museum of Australia
