Search results for 'Jean Sim'

Peter Harley: Queensland Folk Wood Carver

A quite remarkable amount of wood-carving was produced in Australia, in the framework of the Arts and Crafts movement, at the beginning of the 20th century which is, and remains, unidentified. If we don’t have a provenance we can look at stylistically similar works, such as Queensland’s Harvey School,...

H.A. Nielsen, Art Cabinet Maker, of Port Douglas, North Queensland

Many colonial woodworkers, often trained in Britain or Europe, came to Australia and discovered the vast variety of native timbers suitable for carving or for making furniture and timber articles. Jewellery ‘book boxes’ made from several contrasting North Queensland timbers and bearing the stamp of ‘H.A. ...

H C Simpson and his popular art

While the artist H. C. Simpson (1879–1966) depicted subjects such as Mount Warning in northern NSW, his output is emphatically linked with the early years of the ‘Gold Coast’ and specifically the resort towns of Coolangatta, Currumbin and Tweed Heads. Although his work is not held in particularl...

President’s update

What an outstanding event the Sydney Basin Tour proved to be! While I have detailed this verbally and via personal email, it would be completely remiss of me not to publicly thank Robert Hannan, Peter Crawshaw, Andy Simpson and Tim Cha for their outstanding efforts in planning and delivering a wonderful event. ...

Rosa Fiveash’s Quarantine Camp 1919: a not so new ‘normal’

A small watercolour painting reveals remarkable similarities between the 1919 pandemic and that of our times.

Teaching artists by copying the Masters

In the Middle Ages and Renaissance, workshop and guild traditions were based on the principle of emulation, with apprentices learning by copying the works of their masters. In painting, the practice was gradually regularised and systematised in the curricula of emergent national academies of art, beginning at t...

John Glover through the Claude Glass

English painter John Glover once owned two Italian landscapes by the French painter known as Claude Lorrain. Claude's work prompted artists and tourists to view landscape in terms of art, so they would often look at 'Picturesque' scenery reflected in a tinted convex mirror known as a ‘Claude glass’, simulat...

President’s Update

I trust all members had an enjoyable festive season with the family and friends they were fortunate enough to be able to see. As I have stated all too often, COVID never ceases to amaze with the number of twists and turns it continues to deliver. Who would have ever thought that, with the vaccination levels mos...

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...

An early Australian mourning brooch

A gold mourning brooch to commemorate the passing of John Hillas in 1847 at Bannaby (or Bunnaby) near Taralga in southern tablelands of NSW is typical of the early Victorian era and many similar pieces come up for sale today (plates 1-2)1. Black enamel surrounds a central glass-covered locket that most likely w...

Mr Head's brass tray

Years ago I bought a brass tray with gum leaves on it. I turned it over and saw that the maker had incised on the back “Hand Made R. Head Cremorne”. At the time, the name meant nothing to me. Then I found another one, without a maker’s name, but in the Arts & Crafts style and with similar features: the sa...

A message from the President

In October this year, the Australiana Society will turn 40, and I am very pleased to announce that we will be recognising this important milestone in a number of different ways. However it is worthwhile remembering that when the Society was founded in 1978 there was very limited interest in Australian decorativ...

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...

A Macquarie-era sideboard

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 Tasmanian...

Book review: Tony Kanellos (editor), ‘Out of the Past: views of the Adelaide Botanic Garden - a series of Edwardian Era Postcards'

The extended title for this splendid visual feast is a catalogue to accompany the exhibition Postcards from the Edge of the City at the Santos Museum of Economic Botany, 9 December 2014 to 26 April 2015. As a catalogue this book contains the front and back sides of 300 postcards published between 1900 and 1917.

Finding Firnhaber treasures

Colonial Australian jewellery is rarely marked with the name of its maker or retailer. Perth jewellery dealer Trevor Hancock sticks his neck out and attributes several pieces to the German-born Adelaide jeweller C. E. Firnhaber, based on stylistic similarities of the works. All of them are illustrated here.

Backchat

The first update to my book Convict and Free: the Master Furniture-makers of NSW 1788–1851 will be available on CD in December, with at least two new chapters, on Thomas Mercer Booth and John McMahon. However, Australiana members may be interested to learn now that a reader from Ireland has provided me with d...

Book review: Jean Fornasiero & John West-Sooby, 'French Designs on Colonial New South Wales'

A lengthy title, but for a magnificently appointed book. It not only provides a translation of Péron’s memoir for the first time, but insightfully explores every relevant nook and cranny of colonial history of the period. The book is considerably enhanced by art works and contemporary maps, particularly thos...

Australian cartography: a numismatic perspective

For centuries, coins and medals have depicted maps of Australia, although rarely if at all have they been studied by scholars. Perhaps this is because of their limited contribution to cartography, as they were used mainly in a political sense. Perhaps collectors and academics are simply unaware of their existen...

Ruth Simon (1924 - 2008)

Thomas Griffiths Wainewright: dilettante, or simply misunderstood?

Caroline Simpson's sampler in the Sydney International Exhibition, 1879

Australian furniture design before WWII

Australia at Montreal

Australia's first book on Industrial Design

Industrial design journals in Australia

Jeanettie Sheldon and her Galleries

Book Notes: A complete Guide to Lighting: Styles, History, Planning, Suppliers by Mandy Jean, Random House Australia, 1991

Book review: The Skottowe Manuscript. A facsimile edition of the original manuscript in the Mitchell Library, Sydney, (2 Vols). David Ell Press & Hordern House 1988

Achille Simonetti, Sculptor

Book review: Noris Ioannou, ‘Ceramics In South Australia 1836-1986. From Folk to Studio Pottery’, Wakefield Press

Book review: Kevin Fahy, Christina Simpson and Andrew Simpson, ’Nineteenth Australian Furniture’, David Ell Press 1985

An Australian Chesterfield

The Origin of a Rare Australian Sampler

An Australian Cabinetmaker's Billhead

Leslie Wilkinson: Architect

Hints on Cleaning Furniture