Lesley Garrett

Lesley Garrett, a long-standing family friend, fondly recalls Trevor Kennedy's life and passion for collecting, amassing the most important collection of Australian decorative arts ever assembled... Anne Schofield, the source of much of the spectacular jewellery acquired for his collection, has her own distinct memories of Trevor Kennedy as a collector... John Hawkins adds an anecdote, praises private collectors for their passion and foresight, and takes a swipe at those who neither appreciate the importance nor fund the collection, preservation and presentation of artefacts that help define us as Australians.

Vanessa Finney, Transformations: Harriet and Helena Scott, colonial Sydney’s finest natural history painters. New South Publishing, 2018, ISBN 9781742235806, 220 pages

How do three spoons, two by Sydney silversmith Alexander Dick and a later spoon made in London, come to bear the same crest and initials? Lesley Garrett explores the possibilities.

The centenary of the First World War has Lesley Garrett bringing out her family’s mementoes of “the war to end all wars” – and regretting the loss of their context.

Author Stephen Marshall is to be congratulated on writing this carefully compiled compendium of (William) Blamire Young’s watercolours, for while in his own words he is a passionate art lover, he modestly refutes being an expert on art history. Nevertheless, over 650 pages he has assembled an impressive catalogue of Young’s known paintings together with their provenance where known, details of the collections in which they are held and where they were originally put up for sale – a useful addition as many of Young’s paintings, as the author notes, are undated.

In masterminding and producing this fine book, Tony Kanellos, Cultural Collections Manager and Curator of the Santos Museum of Economic Botany located in the Adelaide Botanic Garden, has provided both reader and book collector with a gem. It clearly demonstrates his care of and expertise in the safekeeping of the Heinrich Arnoldi collection of fruit and fungi models held by the SMEB (one of the three largest collections of them in the world) since their acquisition by Dr Richard Schomburgk, Director of the fledgling Adelaide Botanic Garden, shortly after taking up that post in 1866. With his own leading essay Tony Kanellos clearly demonstrates his knowledge and ability to write and write well.