Australiana, Vol 46 no 3, August 2024

Vale, Mr Terence Lane OAMIt would be remiss of me not to commence this update without recognising the loss of esteemed member Terence Lane. Most would be aware of Terry’s contribution to the arts, primarily through his involvement as senior curator of decorative arts at the National Gallery of Victoria. Terry was a most valued member of the Society and a significant contributor to the Victorian branch.

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 tombstone had already been removed in the 1840s when the railway station was expanded. Five years after the discovery of his coffin, Flinders was reinterred in his home village of Donington in Lincolnshire. Brothers Robert and Stephen Hannan represented the Australiana Society at the event.

Many items of Australiana are distinguished by their use of Australian materials or their use of Australian motifs. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, several English ceramic factories made wares specifically for the Australian market. The scanty records of the Sydney Technological Museum noted that the person who, between about 1900 and 1910, provided designs of Australian flora as templates for Doulton artists in England to decorate their art ceramics was a ‘Miss Rutherford’. Trove enabled us recently to identify her as Miss Geraldine Rutherford (1869–1952), from a 1910 Bathurst newspaper report. Yvonne Barber looks into Geraldine Rutherford and her family, comprising several amateur lady artists, and their milieu, to illuminate some of the sources of Australian flora designs.

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 children to Australia and served at the Great Synagogue in Sydney from 1922 to 1956.

When a library was a necessity for a well-educated person, ownership of a book was indicated by the presence of a bookplate pasted into their books. While generic bookplates exist, book collectors often approached an artist to design an ex libris specifically for them, with their name and a design which reflected their interests, profession, activities or personality. James Stanton looks at some of the 40 bookplates designed by Melbourne artist Eric Thake over a 54-year span, and the people – often close friends – who asked him to design their personal bookplate.

From either ends of the globe, Portière 1901 has been rediscovered. Over 120 years ago, it was created to commemorate the colony of South Australia joining the Federation of Australia. The Portière was commissioned and made by the first women in the world to gain both the right to vote and to stand for parliament. The impressive 233.0 x 178.0 cm embroidered silk object represents the pinnacle of a golden age of Art Needlework embroidery. However, questions surround it. Just seven years after their enfranchisement, why did South Australian women give members of the British royal family an object that was ostensibly a domestic curtain? Even more intriguing, how did it fall so far into obscurity within the Royal Collection itself that when enquiries were made in 2023, it could no longer be located? This article tells the forgotten story of its origins and in doing so, places it back into the colonial history of the Australian Arts & Crafts Movement.

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.

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 the Victorian goldfields.

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 the pseudonym ‘A Mother’. By chance, while looking for WWII crochet patterns recently, he found her name. Here Peter reveals who she was, while Rachel Mansfield shows how she used modern technology to re-create the original crochet design.

Book review byDr David Bedford of David J Mabberley, The Peter Crossing Collection, an illustrated catalogue, Peter Crossing AM, Sydney, 2022. $95 plus pack and post; Book Review by Meredith Hinchliffe AM of Christine Erratt Ceremonial maces ofAustralian parliaments,Parker Press, Sydney, NSW 2024.