George Richard Addis (1864–1937) is best known as one of Western Australia’s leading late 19th- and early 20th-century goldfields jewellers, whose Western Australian work has been documented by Dorothy Erickson.1 Many jewellers however worked in different colonies, and here Michel Reymond records for the first time Addis’s family background and his work in the eastern colonies.
The Fereday service is a rare example of armorial porcelain tableware relating to colonial Australia, bearing the name, position and crest of the owner Dudley Fereday, first Sheriff of Van Diemen’s Land (1823–33) (plate 1). Although none of the surviving pieces bears a mark identifying the manufacturer, the ware has previously been attributed to Spode, despite not being known Spode shapes. A recent discovery in Tasmania has uncovered the English porcelain factory which made the Fereday table service.
Jewellers William Lamborn, Leopold Wagner and Samuel Woollett all arrived at Melbourne in the first few years after the discovery of gold in Victoria in 1851. Recent research has uncovered new information on these jewellers and their firms – Wagner & Woollett, Lamborn & Wagner and Woollett & Hewitt. The new information builds on the pioneering work and sources referred to in Anne Schofield & Kevin Fahy’s Australian Jewellery 19th and Early 20th Century, and in Kenneth Cavill, Graham Cocks & Jack Grace’s Australian Jewellers Gold & Silversmiths Makers & Marks.
Two years ago, we published a watercolour by John Rider Roberts that is especially important as a visual record of Robert Fowler’s industrial pottery, bottle and pipe works at Camperdown in Sydney’s inner west. As manufacturing in Australia is replaced by service industries, such manufacturing sites are being obliterated and redeveloped for housing, just as this one has recently been. Michel Reymond follows up with a look at some of the other works by this surveyor-artist, who recorded landscapes that have now disappeared, and was well regarded in his time.
