Warwick Oakman

The star item of furniture in the late Caressa Crouch and Carl Gonsalves collection was a cedar sideboard, of very early date, made about 1815–20. The sideboard, which they loved and had left virtually untouched, summed up all that was exceptional in Caressa and Carl’s collection, which focused on Tasmaniana.1 The sideboard has been known to collectors since the late 1980s, and featured in Fahy & Simpson’s Australian Furniture: Pictorial History and Dictionary.2 A prominent Tasmanian collector bought the sideboard at the 2015 auction and returned it to Hobart. The new owner commissioned this article for Australiana, which traces its provenance back to Hobart and speculates about its original location and maker. We hope that readers may add to this research.

The Australiana Society is delighted to report that the new Tasmanian Chapter held its inaugural event on 11 November 2016. Since the foundation of the Australiana Society in 1978, members have believed that Tasmaniana was of sufficient importance, quality and difference to that of mainland Australia to warrant the formation of a Tasmanian Chapter. Part of this no doubt sprung from mysteries surrounding the sheer volume of decorative arts, diversity of timbers, architecture and design on the former island prison.

An early colonial library table in the neo-classical style, with a maker’s label for Clarke of Castlereagh Street, Sydney, c. 1835, came to light in a distressed state a decade ago. Warwick Oakman ponders who might have made the table, where such an impressive piece of furniture might originally have been used, and speculates how it may have come into the hands of its previous owners, a family of solicitors.