Dianne Byrne

What better way to celebrate a golden wedding than with a golden gift that symbolises affection for the recipients, their intimate connection over 50 years and carries their monograms? Dianne Byrne explores the background to a pair of gold napkin rings presented to James and Charlotte Cowlishaw in Brisbane in 1912. Though marked, so far the marks have eluded us as to their maker.

Dianne Byrne shares some of the outcomes of her postgraduate research into 19th-century presentation jewellery and metalwork made in Queensland or for Queenslanders, focusing here on a series of racing trophies made in the 1880s for the Tattersall’s Club Cup run at Eagle Farm racecourse. Two of these were made by the previously neglected Sydney silversmith Thomas Matthew Alcock, and designed in an international ‘Etruscan’ style, which contrasts with the familiar vernacular style incorporating overtly Australian motifs such as emus and kangaroos.

For someone who worked in Tasmania, Victoria, Queensland, NSW and Western Australia between the late 1870s and his death, the prolific scene painter and artist John Campbell (1855–1924) deserves to be better known. Dianne Byrne reveals a number of impressive watercolours which are mostly portraits of the houses of prominent Queenslanders, painted during his brief residence in Brisbane c 1887–1890.

The John Oxley Library at the State Library of Queensland has added a portrait of Lord Lamington, Queensland’s eighth governor, to its collection of historical works of art.

In our May 2015 issue, Dianne Byrne identified a brooch presented in 1867 to Lady Bowen, wife of Queensland’s first Governor, in a photograph held in the National Library. Further detective work has revealed that the brooch is still held by Lady Bowen’s descendants in England. We illustrate it now for the first time.

The practice of presenting diplomatic gifts to dignitaries goes back to antiquity. As the much-admired wife of the governor of the colonies of Queensland, New Zealand and Victoria, Diamantina, Lady Bowen received some significant pieces of jewellery and metalwork. These gifts were frequently, and often fulsomely, described in contemporary newspapers. Dianne Byrne investigates some of her presentation pieces, through newspaper accounts and images.