Via @benvwilkie on twitter, these ceramic vents in a pub façade—the Argyle Arms in Hamilton, Victoria—are absolutely stunning.
The Victorian Heritage Database (http://vhd.heritagecouncil.vic.gov.au/places/26677/download-report) attributes the works to a pair of Melbourne architects, Seabrook and Fildes, and dates them to a 1930s renovation of the c.1860s pub.
The 1930s were a bit of a golden age for Australian pub architecture, across the country but particularly in NSW where the major brewers funded an efflorescence of Art Deco drinking shops (https://collection.maas.museum/object/360699). The style of architecture here is a nod to the pub’s social function: it’s a public building, vernacular and respectable at the same time, so makes deliberate nods to Roman elements: the pilasters beside the windows, and in these vents, classical circles and crosses.
Pubs of the ‘six o’clock swill’ era, before 1966 in Victoria, were tiled inside and out to make it easier for the workers to hose off the vomit, and the other bodily fluids you get from large groups of men drinking heavily and fast.
