Search results for 'Tim Cha'

George W. Goyder, South Australia’s Surveyor-General

After seeing three paintings of great historical significance, following a random but serendipitous encounter, severalSouth Australian collectors arranged for the items to be deposited in the State Library of South Australia where they canbe catalogued, preserved, and made digitally and physically accessible to...

Our Treenage Years

Well-researched histories exist on 19th-century Australian furniture, silver and ceramics. Most of them are reliable sources of information, although possibly outdated, especially since the advent of Trove. Other areas have not yet been researched or have little information available. Avid Queensland collector ...

Woollies – maritime folk art

Nicola Kissane presents some maritime folk art in the form of ‘woollies’, images of ships made of coloured woollen yarn, each with an Australian connection. The maker, date, origin, subject and other data relating to folk art is often difficult to pin down. As records are generally lacking, these objects of...

Fashioning Empire in Adelaide. The J. Miller Anderson Wedding Gown of 1881: Fashion, Labour, and Aspiration in Colonial South Australia

Described at the time as ‘the first of its kind produced in these colonies’, the wedding gown examined in this article embodies significance beyond its sartorial form; it constitutes a multi-faceted historical artefact positioned at the nexus of design, commerce, technology, identity and social history. Pet...

Jonoski Takuma, Cameo Carver of Emu Eggs: addendum

In our May and August issues of 2025, siblings Jennifer and Lindsey Harris explored the cross-cultural influence ofJapanese craftsman Jonoski Takuma in his carving of Australian scenes on emu eggs around the time of Federation.Their articles led ornithologist and collector Dr Mark Cabouret to look very carefull...

Let there be Lights

Those of us with collections of brown furniture sometimes brighten up our display space with art, pottery or ceramics. Bob Fredman takes us through another option, decorative kerosene lamps, some of which were made in Australia. They are very interesting in their own right and when hung or placed in the ri...

Goldfinders’ Home Inn, Kurrajong and Australia’s early timber houses

The purchase of the former Goldfinders’ Home Inn at Kurrajong led owners Chris and Deborah Hallam to research their property, discovering that European habitation on the site began much earlier than initially believed. This inspired them to locate and document 160 early timber houses across the nation. The co...

President’s update

Thank you to members who provided feedback on the proposed changes toour national tour registration procedures, detailed in May Australiana. Many members advised that they understood the constraints of having limited places on these much sought-after tours, mostly of private h...

Ada Whiting miniatures

Unusually for an artist, Ada Whitingnee Cherry (1859 –1953) was a celebrated success in her lifetime.1In 1900, the first time she submitted a portrait miniature to the Royal Academy in London, it was hung ‘onthe line’ – a small work needs to be exhibited at eye level. Remarkable for a‘colonial’, a f...

Book Review: Ken Orchard, James Ashton

Ken Orchard, James Ashton,Artist of the Fleurieu Coast.Royal South Australian Society ofArts, Adelaide 2025. Soft cover,95 pages 29 x 21 cm. Exhibitioncatalogue, all paintings and objectsillustrated, chronology, bibliography.$30, available only at the RSASA,Institute...

The ‘Meat in The Sandwich’ between Boom and Bust: James Clarke Waite’s 'The Saltwater River', 1896

A chance online encounter with an arresting 19th-century oil painting depicting a scene of forlorn industry on the banks of the Saltwater River, executed by one of Australia’s foremost portrait painters of the Victorian period, and its offering in a Hobart auction may have misled some to assume it depicted a ...

Phyllis Murphy 1924–2025

Dr Phyllis Murphy AM, a long-time member of the Australiana Society, died in May, just a few weeks short of her 101st birthday. Born Phyllis Slater in Melbourne in 1924,Phyllis developed a strong interest in buildings and design from an early age. Her son Jock Murphy records her architectural work and her ...

President’s update

What an outstanding success the 2024
national tour of Victoria was!
Victorian branch chair Robert Stevens
and his team did an absolutely fantastic
job in every regard. From venue selection,
menu selection, to negotiating the best
possible deal with all providers, nothing
more could possibly have been wis...

Judge’s Report: The 2024 Peter Walker Fine Art Award

Once again, the task of judging
the Peter Walker Fine Arts Writing
Award has proved challenging. The
challenge comes from the diversity of
well-researched, well-illustrated articles.
Inevitably the short list for the Award
will come from the longer articles but the
interest of the magazine comes as much
...

How did a cockatoo reach 13th-century Sicily?

Frederick II of Sicily made contact with the Kurdish al-Malik Muhammad al-Kamil in 1217, a year before he became Sultan
of Egypt. Over the next 20 years, the two rulers communicated regularly, exchanging letters, books and rare and exotic
animals. One exotic gift the Sultan sent Frederick was a Sulphur-creste...

Gold Australian animal sculptures

Two gold sculptures featuring Australian animals expertly cast in Sydney bySimon Adrien Schagen (1923–2013)were offered by West Sussex auctioneersToovey’s on 8 August 2024.

President’s update

I trust all members had a most enjoyable festive season with family and friends. 2025 is well and truly upon us with significant events planned for the calendar year.It was most pleasing to finish 2024 with 556 members. This is a record for the society and demonstrates the value which members perceive they are ...

Ian Stephenson 1 December 1955 – 20 October 2024

When we eventually and inevitably lose some of our friends and colleagues, we have a duty to encapsulate their contributions to the heritage movement generally. Ian Stephenson was such a person, an active member of the Australiana Society and many other organisations. Starting his working life at the Tax Office...

An industrial souvenir rediscovered

Curators know that the best place to find good artefacts is in the neglected corners of a museum store. Megan Martin found an interesting cast-iron historical plaque, an item from a radical time when a commitment to state-owned enterprises was a central plank of the policy platform of Queensland’s Labor Gover...

John Wilson Carey and his ‘Queensland’ cabinet timbers

Scottish-born immigrant cabinetmaker John Wilson Carey (1829–1902) made two exceptional items of Queensland
cabinetwork in the 1870s which still exist today. His skilful use of many different Queensland timber veneers makes them
cabinetmaking tours de force. ...

John Wilson Carey, cabinetmaker and saw-miller

While David Bedford has analysed two extant examples of veneered Queensland desks made by J W Carey, Yvonne Barber
provides biographical information about this man devoted to the Queensland timber industry, who remarked that ‘taking a
man like him from his business was li...

The reinterment of Captain Matthew Flinders RN

A new high-speed rail line between London and Birmingham led to archaeological excavations at St James’s burial ground under Euston Station. In 2019, archaeologists uncovered a wooden coffin bearing an engraved plate identifying the remains as those of Captain Matthew Flinders (1774–1814); his to...

Making the winning crochet design of 1924

Peter Lane’s article, ‘Australian filet crochet, The Weekly Times Book of Patterns’ that appeared in May 2024 Australiana, included biographies of the crochet designers and judges of the newspaper’s crochet competition. But it did not record the journalist, who used t...

Phillis Seal, a remarkable woman

On the death of her husband Charles in Hobart in 1852, Phillis Seal (1807–1877) became the first woman to own and run a whaling fleet. Buffeted by falling prices for whale oil and labour shortages due to the gold rushes, Phillis eventually sold her ships and retired to live near her eldest son at Ballarat in ...

‘I’m on the throne!’

Bob Fredman brings some country humour to discussing the design inspiration of a chair discovered in Brisbane, made of Queensland timbers, which also displays Egyptian design elements. He suggest it was probably made in Queensland and inspired by the finding of Tutankhamun’s tomb at Luxor in 1922.<...

Research assistance needed: Rabbi Leib Aisack Falk

The family of the late Rabbi Leib Aisack Falk (1889–1957) is preparing a comprehensive book about him. Rabbi Falk was born in what is now Latvia, moving to Scotland in 1911, next going to Plymouth, then becoming a British Army chaplain in Egypt and Palestine 1918–1921. He came with his wife and c...

Australian filet crochet, The Weekly Times book of patterns

Australiana is sometimes accused of being exclusive, publishing articles only on fine, expensive, early-19th century art and artefacts associated with famous men or families from the Eastern States. South Australian contributor Peter Lane delves into the makers and designers of early 20th cent...

President’s update

I trust all members had an enjoyable festive season with family and friends, and took the opportunity to relax. During this period of relaxation, you may well have spent some time reading Australiana and the book so generously donated regarding John Mitchell Cantle, Australia’s first native-born orn...

A Treasure Chest?

Chests of drawers come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and are easy to describe using some basic elements such as dimensions and number of drawers, types of timber, feet, knobs etc. For scholars of early furniture many more parameters come into play, not the least being an assessment of whether all its ...

Artur Loureiro, a navigator of the fine arts: from Porto to Melbourne

Born in Portugal and trained in Europe, Artur Loureiro (1853–1932) settled in Melbourne where he painted and taught art for a living between 1884 and 1904. Painting various subjects in a wide range of styles, he associated with all the leading Melbourne artists of the time – Streeton, Conder, McC...

The Peter Walker Fine Art Writing Award 2023

Judging the annual Peter Walker Fine Art Writing Award, established in 1999 to encourage authors to write for Australiana, has proved especially challenging this year, with so many well-researched contributions. 

Annual Report of the Australiana Society 2023

... 







The 2023 financial year has proven to be another great year for the Society.
With the disaster that was COVID-

19 behind us, your board got to work at a national and state level to deliver
enhanced opportunities to benefit
me...

William Milner and his ceramic legacy

European immigrant William Milner was a little-known entrepreneur who established a porcelain manufacturing business after
arriving in Melbourne in 1911. The porcelain industry was largely driven by a massive need for electrical insulators, and, as
COVID-19 has demons...

What makes an exhibition remarkable?

Leo Schofield describes his first (and last!) gig as chair of the curatorium which devised the current exhibition at the Powerhouse
Museum in Ultimo in Sydney, the first major and kaleidoscopic show of objects from the Museum’s holdings since 1988. It has
proved exception...

Wedgwood: Master Potter to the Universe

Curator and historian Tim Roberts previews a new exhibition on the English ceramics firm Wedgwood, founded by Josiah Wedgwood in 1759, and linked with the British colonisation of Australia through its design and manufacture of the ‘Sydney Cove Medallions’ in 1789. These were made from Sydney clay sent...

The Great Kangaroo Wood Mystery

Bob Fredman highlights an interesting discovery, English cabinetmakers using Australian rose mahogany as an exotic furniture timber in the early 19th-century. He suggests that, in the dearth of mentions of rose mahogany in early Australian furniture, there may be a major void in our knowledge and in our collect...

The Squatter’s Delight, or ‘A Man’s Chair’

Robert Griffin makes the case for the introduction of the squatter’s chair – a robust easy chair with swing-out leg rests – as an idea imported from India in the early 19th century. These chairs found a home on the shady verandahs of homesteads, particularly in Queensland and NSW, where the lan...

Book Review: Ron Radford, John Glover. Patterdale Farm and the Revelation of the Australian Landscape

Leading colonial artist? Or leading early 19th-century British artist working in the colony of Van Diemen’s Land? Clearly the latter. Ron Radford, John Glover, Patterdale Farm and the Revelation of the Australian Landscape reveals how John Glover (1767–1849), a leading artist...

A Gift for the Queen: Andrew Lenehan’s Casket

Zealous colonists wanted those ‘at home’ to know how economically successful the British colonies in Australia had become. When gold was found in 1851, the Governor of New South Wales sent specimens of the first gold, in boxes made using selected colonial timbers by Irish-born cabinetmaker Andrew...

Scrimshaw – real or fake?

Scrimshaw, the ancient art of the mariner is a most important part of our heritage which is very collectable. At times, scrimshaw achieves very high prices at auction in Australia and internationally. This article relates solely to Australian scrimshaw which is different in many ways to American or in...

Exhibition: Charles Rodius, State Library of NSW

The first retrospective of ‘19th-century Australia’s best unknown artist’, Charles Rodius (1802–1860), bringing together 92 original watercolours, drawings and prints, will be shown at the State Library of NSW. While the host library holds the largest collection, other notable examples are held in the N...

Early Sydney silver flatware

Four early Australian silver flatware items – two spoons and two forks – engraved with the three initials ‘WEB’ present a challenge warranting research. Whose engraved initials (WEB) are they and when were the items made and engraved? Christine Erratt offers an answer. Four flatware1items with...

Australiana Society Tour of Bendigo and Castlemaine

Victorian chairman Robert Stevens reports on a November 2022 tour to the Central Goldfields region.

President’s Update

Your Board trusts that you have enjoyed exploring our new website, taken the opportunity to review it in detail and researched past articles. Members’ feedback has been most encouraging! As with any change, there is always the odd issue; we are doing our best to fix them and will further enhance the site base...

An Itinerant Australian Colonial Billiard Table

The National Museum of Australia in Canberra has purchased an Australian billiard table, carved in high relief with multiple panels of scenes of colonial life, and its matching marking board. Its price of $1,100,000 sets a new record for a piece of Australian furniture. The NMA is not known for collecting Austr...

Kitchen inspirations: the recipe books of a Queensland flour manufacturer

As far as eating paraphernalia goes, Australiana has previously covered dining tables and chairs, sideboards, ceramic plates, silver table ornaments, Splayds and even tea towels. Megan Martin demonstrates that it is about time we looked at recipe books, particularly as these Queensland examples ...

I Opine it’s a ‘Pine’

From the foundation of the colonies, local cabinetmakers experimented with using the wide range of native timbers. Bob Fredman discusses a chest of drawers, most likely made about 1900 in Bundaberg, Queensland and probably by a local cabinet maker of Germanic heritage, who liked to use contrasting timbers with ...

Arnott’s Kookaburra – a Mystery Biscuit

We sometimes forget that some artefacts are ephemeral. Paul Gregson reminds us that a biscuit can be a nostalgic piece of Australiana, though it may only exist now in images.

H.A. Nielsen, Art Cabinet Maker, of Port Douglas, North Queensland

Many colonial woodworkers, often trained in Britain or Europe, came to Australia and discovered the vast variety of native timbers suitable for carving or for making furniture and timber articles. Jewellery ‘book boxes’ made from several contrasting North Queensland timbers and bearing the stamp of ‘H.A. ...

Mary Jones: a Mysterious Artist in Queensland

Brisbane painter and art teacher Mary E. Jones has escaped recognition for 130 years. She would not be alone in that fate: over time, many aspiring painters and their works disappear from history. Timothy Roberts reveals some details about Miss Jones’s career and her impact as a woman artist in Brisbane betwe...