Richard Batholomew Smith’s Wunderkammer
R.B. Smith made his model of the Strasburg Clock to celebrate the centenary of British settlement. It was hailed as a “scientific triumph of Australian workmanship”. At first, Smith exhibited it privately “like a fat woman in a country fair”1 until it found a home in Sydney’s Technological Museum. The clock has been there ever since, a popular and much-loved exhibit although the mechanism has been unreliable. Now, Andrew Montana turns our attention to identifying the subjects and painters of the portraits decorating Sydney’s Centennial Strasburg Clock.
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