coast. Later, some of them moved to Paris where Jorgensen established himself in a studio at 147 Rue Broca in the 13th Arrondissement. He returned to Australia in 1929. During this period, Jorgensen enjoyed considerable success both in Paris and London, with exhibitions at several major galleries including being hung at the prestigious Royal Academy Summer Exhibition in both 1926 and 1927, a rare honor for an Australian. The influences of this period in Europe are apparent both in his painting and in the architecture of Montsalvat. Jorgensen bought a home and studio in the Melbourne bayside suburb of Brighton and later leased an old warehouse in Queen Street, Melbourne as his city studio where he could work and teach. In 1956 the studio had to be vacated when the building was demolished to make way for the Royal Automobile Club of Victoria (RACV). The Queen Street classes had attracted many students and the studio had become an important hub of intellectual and bohemian life in conservative Melbourne. Jorgensen had continued to accept architectural work and in 1934 while working on the design and construction of a studio in Eltham for the painter and cartoonist Percy Leason, he decided that it was here he wanted to live, and so the Montsalvat dream began. Jorgensen invited his students and friends to join him in Eltham where he harnessed their collective enthusiasm in the building of Montsalvat. Among those early students and friends were author and critic Mervyn Skipper, his wife Lena and their three children – Helen, Sonia and Matcham. Arthor Munday, George Charlmers, Lesley Sinclair, Sue Vanderkelen, Ian Robertson, Helen Lempriere, John Smith, John Busst and Myra Skipper. Percy Leason and his family lived next door and then there were the many friends who came to join in the work and the camaraderie of the camp. Two notable Australian artists said to be associated with Montsalvat were Leonard French and Albert Tucker. Early Montsalvat The Eltham district had been settled since the 1850s; some of these early pioneers had used mud bricks to build their farmhouses, but the method had long been abandoned. Jorgensen saw value in the building technique. The local soils appeared suitable for both adobe (mudbrick) and pisé de terre (rammed earth) and it was cheap, so he set his students to work. He dispatched Arthur Munday, to the State Library in Melbourne to research the technique.