Australiana, Vol 44 no 2, May 2022

What an outstanding event the Sydney Basin Tour proved to be! While I have detailed this verbally and via personal email, it would be completely remiss of me not to publicly thank Robert Hannan, Peter Crawshaw, Andy Simpson and Tim Cha for their outstanding efforts in planning and delivering a wonderful event. I make this comment from the joint positions of Society President and an attendee. Well done! A report on the tour is provided in this issue of Australiana.

Wet conditions in humid climates, and especially with the recent floods in eastern Australia, exacerbate the problem of household damp and mould. For collectors, this is likely to affect sensitive items, such as furniture and works of art on paper. So remember to check your collection regularly, and follow some of the precautions that heritage consultant Robert Griffin suggests.

The Australiana Society aims to support ‘researching, preserving and collecting Australia’s heritage’. As our readers have a range of interests and live in different states, so we try to cater to all interests and regions. However, we rely on what you submit. Everyone is welcome to submit articles for consideration, and we try to include an article by a first-time contributor in each issue.

The box seen here shows the superb carving of John Kendrick Blogg, a successful and entrepreneurial industrial chemist who was born in 1851 in Canada, settled in the Surrey Hills region of Victoria in 1877 and died in 1936. His day job involved making perfumes and extracting essential oils. Family legend has it that he began making furniture and ornamental wooden carvings after the death of his first wife, Annie, in 1893. This box carries several examples of his carving and, in terms of Australiana, is as good as it gets.

After Albert I King of the Belgians refused safe passage to Kaiser Wilhelm’s troops to attack France, Germany invaded neutral Belgium on 4 August 1914. Britain, bound by an 1839 treaty to support Belgium’s neutrality, declared war on Germany the same day. Australian Prime Minister Joseph Cook offered his government’s support to the British Empire.

When furniture or crib board collecting becomes too hard, because of either their cost or scarcity or both, the average Australiana collector can turn to drinks trays. They can turn to drinks too, but this article is just about the trays.

Two paintings of the Tomb of Father Receveur and the La Perouse Monument at Botany Bay by F. C. Terry mark the end of a significant episode in the exploration and scientific research of the Pacific in the late 18th century, extending from the arrival of the First Fleet at Botany Bay in January 1788 to the great international exhibitions in Europe starting in 1851. The paintings show the tomb of Father Receveur, the first scientist to be buried in Australia, and the monument erected to the La Pérouse expedition, marking the last contact with the two French ships of that expedition, wrecked on the island of Vanikoro in May/June 1788 after sailing from Botany Bay.

We often recognise Australiana by the presence of motifs depicting Australia’s unique flora and fauna and, especially in the 19th century, representations of Indigenous figures. Anthropologists studied Indigenous people, while the things they made – much of it, what we would describe today as art – were regarded as artefacts of ethnological interest. Non-Indigenous artists sometimes adopted Indigenous motifs freely in works on paper, ceramics or fabric. It is rare however to have a non- Indigenous craftsman adapt Indigenous motifs in precious metal. Christine Erratt pursued the story behind a silver brooch with Indigenous motifs.

Many buildings in Australia have been recognised for their architectural or historical significance, or their association with important individuals. Some have been preserved, and some have not. Jillian Dwyer relates the story of Currajong in Melbourne’s east, the Italianate villa built by the prominent colonial Melbourne jeweller William Lamborn in 1886-7 for his comfortable retirement, and the issues raised on different levels in the battle to save the house.

Visions of a Republic. The work of Lucien Henry, the lavishly illustrated 2001 book produced for an exhibition on the designs and art of Lucien Henry (1850–1896), devotes more words to describing a photograph of the couple’s apartment in Darlinghurst (plate 1) than it does to describing his wife Juliette. Yet Madame Henry (1839-1898) was accomplished, respected and admired in her own right, as we can now more easily discover using Trove. While Lucien Henry was a visionary French-born artist who adapted Australian flora and fauna motifs to designs in architecture and the decorative arts, mostly unrealised, Juliette spread the knowledge of French language, literature and culture among Australians. Yvonne Barber reveals the person sometimes hidden by the shadow of her three husbands.

Most craftsmen who emigrated to colonial Australia were trained in the English, Scottish, Irish or German traditions. In Western Australia, several Spanish craftsmen were attracted by the monastery established by their compatriot Bendictine monks at New Norcia. Western Australian craftsmen, mostly using jarrah as their timber of choice, in any case were branching in a different direction to furniture makers from the eastern states. Little of the local furniture was marked, but idiosyncratic Spanish techniques and church or family provenance helps in attributing some pieces to these colonists. Dr Dorothy Erickson delves into the history of one of them, Isidro Oriol.

Paintings on gum leaves are a unique Australian tradition, which began in the 1850s or 1860s and still continues today. The earliest practitioner recorded is Arthur William Eustace (1820–1907), who was born in England and arrived in Victoria with his family in 1851. He found work as a shepherd near Chiltern in northern Victoria. While minding sheep, he took with him a box of oil paints and paint brushes, and painted bush scenes on the oval gum leaves of red and white box trees found locally.

There are sound reasons why you should have good photographs of items in your collection, whether as a record, for research, for publication, for sale and for insurance.

Numbers were limited on the NSW Branch’s recent successful tour of the Sydney Basin, so one of the organisers, Peter Crawshaw, reports on it for members who were not able to take part in person, especially those who live outside Sydney. Colonial furniture collector Bob Fredman was honoured to be asked to give the 2022 Kevin Fahy Annual Lecture during the tour, so he and his wife Debbie took a short break from their property inundated by the Queensland floods.