Search results for 'Geoff Ford'

Henry F Hutton and the Hutton family, Victorian jewellers

Jewellers in colonial Australia, often lured by the gold rushes, came from various parts of Britain and Europe, arriving already
having served their apprenticeships. Teaghan Hall tells the story of several members of the Hutton family, who initially came to
the colonial Victorian...

Reclaiming a Suite of Queensland Colonial Furniture

Wedgwood: Master Potter to the Universe

Curator and historian Tim Roberts previews a new exhibition on the English ceramics firm Wedgwood, founded by Josiah Wedgwood in 1759, and linked with the British colonisation of Australia through its design and manufacture of the ‘Sydney Cove Medallions’ in 1789. These were made from Sydney clay sent...

Book Review: Ron Radford, John Glover. Patterdale Farm and the Revelation of the Australian Landscape

Leading colonial artist? Or leading early 19th-century British artist working in the colony of Van Diemen’s Land? Clearly the latter. Ron Radford, John Glover, Patterdale Farm and the Revelation of the Australian Landscape reveals how John Glover (1767–1849), a leading artist...

I’ve been Framed

Bob Fredman suggests old picture frames as another area of affordable and rewarding collecting. As well as being potentially useful, these nostalgic items often have an interesting story to tell, as Bob demonstrates with these examples, all found in Queensland.

Thomas Griffiths' book box construction

Thomas Griffiths (1856–1943), a Welsh blacksmith and wheelwright, emigrated to Queensland to start a new life as a ‘skilled migrant’, at first clinging to his old profession in the Ipswich area. When the Queensland railway network was expanding, he saw
a new business opportunity and opened a sawmill at...

Photographing your Collection

There are sound reasons why you should have good photographs of items in your collection, whether as a record, for research, for publication, for sale and for insurance.

Book reviews

JOURNAL REVIEW BY DR ROSS JOHNSTON, Queensland History Journal, vol. 24, no. 11, November 2021, (Journal of The Royal Historical Society of Queensland); BOOK REVIEW BY DR LINDA YOUNG, Fringe, Frog & Tassel: The Arts of the Trimmings-Maker in Interior Decoration. By Annabel Westman; BOOK REVIEW BY DR DAVID BEDF...

The use of Australian tulip wood in Australian furniture and boxes

Decorative timber inlay work became popular in British and European furniture and other wooden items in the 18th century. European exploration of the so-called New World tropics and subsequent colonisation gave access to a greatly increased range of superb cabinet timbers. Cabinetmakers initially concentrated o...

Queensland 1859 Secession’ pottery medals

Glen went on to tell us, in a joking manner, that he had made these fake 1859 Secession Medals in 1977 for fun in the hope of making some money while he was a student working in the Visual Arts department at the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education in
Toowoomba (now the University of Southern Queensla...

Allen Duckworth, woodworker and native timbers crusader

In the preceding article, David Bedford identified four Australian manufacturers of cribbage boards: Grose Manufacturing Co of Brisbane; Clipsal, a brand name of Gerard Industries in Adelaide; John Sands & Co, founded in Sydney as Sands & Kenny in 1851; and Crown Mulga made by A.W.G. Davey & Sons Lt...

Australian cribbage boards – an affordable collectable

Both plain and novelty cribbage boards have been produced around the world for about 400 years. Australian-made cribbage boards can only be post–1788 and at this stage I know of no boards dating before the early 1800s, though very plain boards are difficult to date accurately. By the mid-19th century, many no...

Casuarina Timbers in Australia

One of the most distinctive timbers in Australia comes from trees known by their common name as casuarinas. In botanical taxonomic terms, there are actually two main genera growing in Australia: Allocasuarina and Casuarina. A third genus, Gymnostoma, is restricted to far north Queensland. The timber characteris...

Angels in the Studio in Western Australia

Continuing our story of the women artists who worked in Western Australia,1 we examine the careers of those who exhibited in the Paris and Glasgow international exhibitions at the turn of the century – when Western Australia was in the midst of a Gold Rush. While Lady Forrest’s work was exhibited in a separ...

Carl Ewald, ‘Gluepot’ Graetz of Graetztown, South Australia

German settlers in South Australia, notably in the Barossa and to a lesser extent in other parts of Australia, introduced a furniture style based on the rural carpentry traditions of their native lands, rather than the more common styles seen in Australia derived from British cabinetmaking. David Bedford and Ri...

The mystery of the missing James Coutts Crawford watercolours of Glebe, Sydney c 1845

The authors are seeking to locate a number of watercolours painted by amateur artist James Coutts Crawford, who lived in Australia in the late 1830s and 1840s, especially his views of early settlement on the Glebe peninsula. Then an Arcadian rural retreat, Glebe is now a densely settled inner Sydney suburb, but...

Scrimshaw for presentation

Colin Thomas, Australiana Society Tasmanian Branch Chair, has assembled a scrimshaw collection with the scope and quality of institutional collections in the former whaling centres of New Bedford in Massachusetts1 and Hull in Yorkshire.2 Thomas’s collection encompasses the breadth of scrimshaw from tools to m...

Virtual Show & Tell

Communicating with members is a vital activity of any society. We also aim to share knowledge, mainly through our scholarly magazine Australiana. Another channel of communication is through the internet, which has been used for the last few years by the South Australian Study Group, with its monthly “Show and...

At Home' at Clairville: a Tasmanian Branch event

On a beautiful summer’s afternoon, 85 members from Brisbane, Melbourne, Sydney, Hobart and northern Tasmania attended the Tasmanian Branch’s 2020 opening event, an ‘At Home’ at Clairville (plate 1) near Evandale, courtesy of the owners, Michael McWilliams and Robert Henley (plates 2-3). The event on 22 ...

Robert Dowling, the elusive cabinetmaker of O'Brien's Bridge, Van Diemen's Land

David Bedford has researched the life and work of Tasmanian cabinetmaker Richard Dowling (c 1820/1822–1867), little documented till now. He presents new discoveries about Dowling’s life and suggests why Dowling’s story has been so elusive. Evidence has emerged, and examples of his work found, which show t...

Society News

Forty years of collecting: a love affair with Australiana

David Bedford and Jennifer Stuerzl reflect on the pleasures of 40 years of collecting Australiana. Jennifer is a practising artist, painter, print and artist’s book maker and curates international print shows. David was trained as a botanist and became Director of the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens before ...

An exhibition quality display case veneered with an ornate Australian timber

This two-height cabinet (plate 1) has a capped, ogee-shaped cornice above, two glazed, veneer-bordered upper doors and two veneered panel doors below flanked by columns (plate 2), standing on a plinth. Its known provenance, as reported to me, is that it was found in Strathfield, Sydney, in the 1970s. Antique de...

How to use protein glues

Furniture restorer Paul Gregson follows up Dr David Bedford’s article on “hide glue” in Australiana for November 2018 with some practical advice, although he suggests that a demonstration is more informative to understand the process.

Convict artist Frederick Strange ... the mystery deepens

In 2002, Therese Mulford and Robyn Lake co-authored an article on the shadowy painter Frederick Strange (c 1807-1873),1 best known as a painter of landscapes and portraits in Tasmania.2 Some of his works were recently showcased in an exhibition, The Enigmatic Mr Strange, at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gal...

Thomas Wright, Geelong colonial silversmith and jeweller

Thomas Wright (c.1827–1912) may not be a well-known name today, but in early Geelong his shop was a mainstay. As with many other silversmiths and jewellers, little of his work survives, so his name rarely comes up in publications. The recent discovery of a Thomas Wright silver trowel in the Geelong Grammar Sc...

Using hide glue to repair antique furniture

David Bedford cautions against using modern glues for antique furniture restoration, recommending instead that you stick with old-fashioned animal glues.

Moreton Bay pearls in Australian jewellery

Australian colonial artists sought to use local materials and to appropriate local motifs in their artworks for several reasons: to reflect the Australian origin of their work, to distinguish it from the art of other nations, and to foster a stronger sense of connection with the country. Moreton Bay pearls are ...

Letter to the editor, 'Backchat'

From Clive Lucas OBE: I very much enjoyed Robert Stevens’s article on Elizabeth Hudspeth, and would like to draw attention to her involvement with Australia’s first picturesque “Italian” villa at Rosedale near Campbell Town. Miss Hudspeth visited the house soon after its completion in the 1840s to the d...

Gladys Osborne's portrait miniatures

In 2012, the very substantial archive of the late Leslie Nicholl Walford AM (1927–2012) was acquired by the Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection. Walford was one of the most influential interior designers in Australia, especially in society circles in Sydney. He was widely known through his weekly n...

Book review: Jenny Cullen, 'Sir Charles Lloyd Jones'

There are many fine artists who barely rate a mention in the history of Australian art, so it was gratifying to read a long overdue biography of Charles Lloyd Jones (1878–1958). Jones is best known today as the Managing Director of David Jones department store during its boom times in the first half of the la...

David G. Reid - printmaker, painter and plumber

Scottish immigrant David Reid was a plumber and gasfitter who worked in Sydney’s inner western suburb of Newtown. He enriched his life by taking up painting and etching, mostly of pastoral scenes, and by participating in the life of the artistic community.

Fit for a Queen: two Royal jubilee testimonies from colonial Queensland

On 6 February 2012, Queen Elizabeth II celebrated her Diamond Jubilee, the 60th anniversary of her accession. This milestone has afforded an examination of her life and reign, and has revived interest in the Royal Family at large, including Britain’s longest reigning monarch, Queen Victoria. Queensland – on...

‘Lalla’: Alice Rochford Cayley and Jack Castle Harris, part 2

An 1865 watercolour of Fowler's Camperdown Pottery

The art detective

Book review: Silas Clifford-Smith, ‘Percy Lindsay, artist and bohemian’

Rare Lithgow water filter discovery

Rediscovering Jonathan Leak

A traveller's tale: the life and times of artist Henri Tebbitt

Thomas Dean:the sentimental Fettler

S.John Ross, the silhouette man

James MacNally

Tasmania's Huon Pottery

William Holford's art and influence on Australian Pottery

A stranger to the town: the life of colonial painter Frederick Strange

William Wilson, Rediscovered Tasmanian Framemaker

William Champion: a Colonial Cabinetmaker

Hood Picture Frames

William Holford: His Designs and Travels