Search results for 'Peter Watts'

Vol 46 no 4, November 2024
A window into the past
By Peter Crawshaw   |   November 2024   |   Vol 46 no 4




Through The Glebe Society, local homeowners contacted members Peter Crawshaw and Robert Hannan to ask what was
known about a large stained-glass window, obviously not in its original location, which had been installed in their house.
By using their contacts and research skills, they di...

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Vol 46 no 3, August 2024
Book reviews
By    |   August 2024   |   Vol 46 no 3

Book review byDr David Bedford of David J Mabberley, The Peter Crossing Collection, an illustrated cataloguePeter Crossing AM, Sydney, 2022. $95 plus pack and post; Book Review by Meredith Hinchliffe AM of Christine Erratt Ceremonial maces ofAustr...

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Vol 46 no 3, August 2024
Making the winning crochet design of 1924
By Peter Lane and Rachel Mansfield   |   August 2024   |   Vol 46 no 3

Peter Lane’s article, ‘Australian filet crochet, The Weekly Times Book of Patterns’ that appeared in May 2024 Australianaincluded biographies of the crochet designers and judges of the newspaper’s crochet competition. But it did not record the journalist, who used t...

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Vol 46 no 2, May 2024
Australian filet crochet, The Weekly Times book of patterns
By Peter Lane   |   May 2024   |   Vol 46 no 2

Australiana is sometimes accused of being exclusive, publishing articles only on fine, expensive, early-19th century art and artefacts associated with famous men or families from the Eastern States. South Australian contributor Peter Lane delves into the makers and designers of early 20th cent...

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Vol 46 no 1, Feb 2024
The Peter Walker Fine Art Writing Award 2023
By Megan Martin   |   February 2024   |   Vol 46 no 1

Judging the annual Peter Walker Fine Art Writing Award, established in 1999 to encourage authors to write for Australiana, has proved especially challenging this year, with so many well-researched contributions. 

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Vol 45 no 4, Nov 2023
Annual Report of the Australiana Society 2023
By    |   November 2023   |   Vol 45 no 4

... 







The 2023 financial year has proven to be another great year for the Society.
With the disaster that was COVID-

19 behind us, your board got to work at a national and state level to deliver
enhanced opportunities to benefit
me...

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Vol 45 no 4, Nov 2023
Robert Ponsonby Staples and early plein-air painting in Australia
By Peter Walker   |   November 2023   |   Vol 45 no 4




British artist Robert Ponsonby Staples was a casual visitor to Australia with his father Sir Nathaniel Staples, sailing on the first
voyage outwards of the SS Orient in November-December 1880. After a month in Sydney, the pair departed on SS Orient’s return
voyage i...

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Vol 45 no 2, May 2023
Book review: Tokens of Love, Loss and Disrespect 1700–1850
By Peter Lane   |   May 2023   |   Vol 45 no 2

The subject of this book is coins
that have had their surfaces engraved, repurposed to communicate private and public messages. It covers the whole spectrum of engraved coins created
in Great Britain and forms a cultural backdrop of Australian culture, which pre-gold-rush era was predominantly
a ...

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Vol 45 no 2, May 2023
National tour to Canberra and Regional NSW
By Peter Crawshaw   |   May 2023   |   Vol 45 no 2

The March 2023 Australiana Society National Tour of Canberra and regions was a great success. Forty people from NSW, Victoria, Tasmania and Queensland enjoyed three days visiting diverse collections and houses. Each venue gave us a different perspective and appreciation of Australiana, in d...

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Vol 45 no 1, Feb 2023
The 2022 Peter Walker Fine Arts Writing Award
By Megan Martin   |   February 2023   |   Vol 45 no 1

I began last year’s judge’s report with the observation that the annual Peter Walker Fine Art Writing Award, established in 1999 to encourage authors to write for Australiana, had achieved its objectives. The four issues of Australiana published in 2022 confirm that judgement and show that th...

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Vol 45 no 1, Feb 2023
Peter Harley: Queensland Folk Wood Carver
By Glenn R Cooke   |   February 2023   |   Vol 45 no 1

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,...

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Vol 44 no 4, Nov 2022
President’s Update
By Colin Thomas   |   November 2022   |   Vol 44 no 4

Thank you to the members who attended the 2022 Annual General Meeting in person or via zoom. Thank you also for the show of support to me as President and to the other Directors who were elected.

I particularly thank Peter Crawshaw for his nomination and subsequent election to the Secretary’s position. Ly...

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Vol 44 no 4, Nov 2022
Queensland to a T Collection and Exhibition, State Library of Queensland
By Peter Spearritt   |   November 2022   |   Vol 44 no 4

Prodigious Australiana contributor Glenn R. Cooke is well known through his professional interests in Queensland art, decorative arts and social history. But that does not define Glenn; he loves ballroom dancing and gardens, as well as pursuing a sideline in collecting artefacts relating to his home stat...

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Vol 44 no 4, Nov 2022
Above the Trenches? Cast-metal Aeroplanes of the 1940s
By Peter Hobbins   |   November 2022   |   Vol 44 no 4

Polished-brass and chrome-plated aeroplanes were popular World War II mementoes – but how were they made and why did they take off in Australia?

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Vol 44 no 2, May 2022
Australiana Society Sydney Basin Tour, March 2022
By Peter Crawshaw   |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

Numbers were limited on the NSW Branch’s recent successful tour of the Sydney Basin, so one of the organisers, Peter Crawshaw, reports on it for members who were not able to take part in person, especially those who live outside Sydney. Colonial furniture collector Bob Fredman was honoured to be asked to give...

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Vol 44 no 2, May 2022
President’s update
By Colin Thomas   |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

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. ...

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Vol 44 no 2, May 2022
The tomb of Father Receveur and the La Pérouse Monument at Botany Bay
By Peter G Towson   |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

Two paintings of the Tomb of Father Receveur and the La Perouse Monument at Botany Bay by F. C. Terry mark the end of a significant episode in the exploration and scientific research of the Pacific in the late 18th century, extending from the arrival of the First Fleet at Botany Bay in January 1788 to the great...

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Vol 44 no 1, February 2022
Peter Walker Fine Art Writing Award 2021
By Megan Martin   |   February 2022   |   Vol 44 no 1

Peter Walker Fine Art established our annual Writing Award in 1999 to encourage writing for Australiana. At that time Australiana was a 32-page magazine, stapled, with three to five articles and a few black-and-white illustrations per issue. Twenty-two years on, the award has achieved its objectives. The Austra...

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Vol 44 no 1, February 2022
President’s Update
By    |   February 2022   |   Vol 44 no 1

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...

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Vol 43 no 3, August 2021
Book Reviews
By    |   August 2021   |   Vol 43 no 3

BOOK REVIEW BY ANNE-MARIE VAN DE VEN Gavin Fry, Havekes Painter, Sculptor, Ceramicist, Beagle Press, Canberra 2020. Hardcover, 168 pp, 32.5 x 27.5 cm, ISBN 987-0-947349-63-9, RRP $99. 
BOOK REVIEW BY PETER LANE Justin Gare, Donald Leslie Johnson and Donald Langmead, Colonial Vision Adelaide Kingston &am...

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Vol 43 no 2, May 2021
Book Reviews
By    |   May 2021   |   Vol 43 no 2

BOOK REVIEW BY PETER LANE Noris Ioannou Vernacular Visions: A Folklife History of Australia: Art, Diversity, Storytelling Wakefield Press, Mile End SA, 2021. Hard cover, 275 pp, 26 x 27 cm, RRP $79.95

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Vol 43 no 2, May 2021
The 2020 Peter Walker Fine Arts Writing Award: Judge’s Report
By Megan Martin   |   May 2021   |   Vol 43 no 2

The annual Peter Walker Fine Art Writing Award, established to encourage authors to write for Australiana, has now operated for more than 20 years. As readers and researchers, we all benefit from Peter Walker’s continuing interest and support but, as the 2020 judge for the award, it seems to me that the task ...

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Vol 43 no 2, May 2021
Update from the President
By Colin Thomas   |   May 2021   |   Vol 43 no 2

Following our calling for expressions of interest and personal approaches, the Board recently endorsed Robert Hannan, Peter Crawshaw, Gail Darby and Phillip Black as the NSW Branch Committee. At the Committee’s first meeting Robert Hannan was elected Chair and Peter Crawshaw Secretary. These individuals posse...

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Vol 43 no 2, May 2021
German wood carvers in Tasmania
By John Wade   |   May 2021   |   Vol 43 no 2

In the 1930s, Henry McPherson, a former Clerk of the House of Assembly, told this story about William Peter Briggs, an employee of Whitesides, and the 1856 Governor’s (now President’s) Chair... This story is apocryphal. Though we normally think foremost of German immigration to South Australia, a German shi...

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Vol 43 no 1, February 2021
South Australian mid-19th century merchants’ tokens
By Peter Lane   |   February 2021   |   Vol 43 no 1

When small change was hard to obtain, some merchants minted and branded their own unofficial currency. Tokens were used as normal currency, accepted by everyone everywhere until British coins became readily available. Copper ‘token’ pennies and halfpennies were circulating in all the Australian colonies in ...

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Vol 42 no 4, Nov 2020
James Cook’s Killora 'Resolution' and 'Adventure' medal
By Peter Lane   |   November 2020   |   Vol 42 no 4

Lieutenant James Cook took various gifts on his voyages of discovery, to distribute to Indigenous people whom he might encounter. Peter Lane draws attention to the only example of one of Cook’s medals found in Australia, a memento of friendly contact between the European explorers and Indigenous Tasmanians in...

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Vol 42 no 3, August 2020
Una Deerbon 1882–1972, Australian potter
By Relton & Peter Leaver   |   August 2020   |   Vol 42 no 3

Una Deerbon was a well-known maker of hand-built pottery, often with applied moulded decoration. When in her late 40s, she began making pottery in 1930. Just three years later she held three solo commercial exhibitions in Sydney and Melbourne, launching her on a successful career as a potter which lasted until ...

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Vol 42 no 3, August 2020
The mystery of the missing James Coutts Crawford watercolours of Glebe, Sydney c 1845
By Robert Hannan & Peter Crawshaw   |   August 2020   |   Vol 42 no 3

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...

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Vol 42 no 2, May 2020
Vol 42 no 2, May 2020
Daniel Cooper's 1856 Foundation Stone Box
By Peter Lane   |   May 2020   |   Vol 42 no 2

In 1856, Governor Denison laid the foundation stone for Daniel Cooper's Woollahra House at Point Piper. The stone was designed to hold an engraved copper box containing coins and a medal. This box was re-used for the foundation ceremony of a later Woollahra House in 1883, and unearthed when it was demolished in...

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Vol 41 no 2, May 2019
Vol 41 no 2, May 2019
Kingston’s vision: South Australia’s earliest and most enigmatic piece of colonial furniture

Three South Australian researchers explore the possible genesis and history of a massive red gum bookcase which came up at an Adelaide auction in 2017. Using a variety of evidence, sources and methods, they identify the bookcase as a very early piece of South Australian furniture and mount a case for who commis...

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Vol 40 no 3, Aug 2018
The South Australian Study Group
By Peter Lane   |   August 2018   |   Vol 40 no 3

NSW has always had the most Australiana Society members. Though Sydney has held Australiana Society events since 1978, only recently have ‘chapters’ been established in Tasmania and Queensland, with their own committees and developing their own programs. South Australia has a ‘study group’ and convenor ...

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Vol 40 no 2, May 2018
Peter Walker Fine Art Writing Award 2017 judge's report
By Elizabeth Ellis   |   May 2018   |   Vol 40 no 2

The Peter Walker Fine Art Writing Award is an annual award which has been generously sponsored by Peter Walker Fine Art of Walkerville, South Australia since 1999. Peter Walker is a valued member and longstanding supporter of the Australiana Society. The Society is most grateful for his continued interest in it...

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Vol 40 no 1, Feb 2018
Tribute: John Rothwell (Ginger) Morris
By Peter Watts   |   February 2018   |   Vol 40 no 1

Peter Watts composed this tribute to John Morris, former director of the National Trust (NSW) and a former President of the Australiana Society. He outlines John’s substantial contribution to heritage conservation in NSW, where he and his allies took the fight up to bureaucrats and developers to preserve buil...

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Vol 40 no 1, Feb 2018
Book review: Peter Lane, ‘The Coin Cabinet'
By Bernie Begley   |   February 2018   |   Vol 40 no 1

If you think that a history of the numismatic collection held by the Art Gallery of South Australia would be a dry read of limited appeal, you are certainly in for a pleasant surprise with Peter Lane’s new book. It is a good read, full of life and interest.

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Vol 40 no 1, Feb 2018
A Rats of Tobruk carved panel
By Peter Lane   |   February 2018   |   Vol 40 no 1

A Rats of Tobruk wood panel falls under the category of “trench art”: decorative objects made by soldiers, prisoners of war, or civilians that are directly linked to armed conflict or its consequences. This term is a misnomer as these objects were rarely, if ever made in the trenches. Many were made from sc...

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Vol 39 no 4, Nov 2017
Fire insurance companies' fire marks in the Art Gallery of South Australia collection
By Peter Lane   |   November 2017   |   Vol 39 no 4

Few of us spend enough time cataloguing, photographing and managing our collections – subjects we will address in future issues. The Art Gallery of SA’s collection of “fire marks” put out by insurance companies has been in storage for over 70 years, but now they have been photographed, and catalogued by...

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Vol 39 no 1, Feb 2017
The 1838 foundation scroll for Adelaide's Wesleyan Methodist Chapel
By Peter Lane   |   February 2017   |   Vol 39 no 1

Religion was much more prominent and pervasive in 19th-century Australia than it is today, and South Australia was more tolerant of all sects than the other colonies. Peter Lane discusses the foundation scroll laid by Governor Gawler for Adelaide’s Wesleyan Methodist Chapel, constructed less than two years af...

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Vol 39 no 1, Feb 2017
The Peter Walker Fine Art Writing Award 2016 judge's report
By Elizabeth Ellis   |   February 2017   |   Vol 39 no 1

The Peter Walker Fine Art Writing Award is an annual award generously sponsored by Peter Walker Fine Art of Walkerville, South Australia. Peter Walker is a valued member and longstanding supporter of the Australiana Society. The Society is most grateful for his continued interest in its activities, and in the j...

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Vol 38 no 3, Aug 2016
Memories of the South Australian jewellery trade
By Leonard Wilton Peterson   |   August 2016   |   Vol 38 no 3

Len Peterson (1904–1981) began working at Adelaide jewellers S. Schlank & Co in 1919, and was closely associated with them until they closed in 1970. This is an edited version of his reminiscences, compiled between 1976 and 1980 for the Goldsmiths Guild of SA, giving an insight into the 20th-century Australia...

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Vol 38 no 3, Aug 2016
Vol 38 no 1, Feb 2016
Ernest Worrall and his Anglo-Boer War khaki keepsake
By Peter Lane   |   February 2016   |   Vol 38 no 1

Dr Annette Gero’s article “Wartime quilts” in the May 2015 Australiana stimulated Peter Lane to contact her about an Anglo-Boer War keepsake. Trooper Ernest Worrall of South Australia had drawn images and words on this rather small scrap of khaki fabric in 1902. Mementoes of that war are rare and Dr Gero ...

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Vol 38 no 1, Feb 2016
German trench art from Victoria
By Peter Lane   |   February 2016   |   Vol 38 no 1

Seldom do prisoner of war trench art objects indicate where they were made. One that does is carved from wood in the shape of continental Australia, with the words and date “Murchison den [the] 24.8.1941” together with a stylised Australian coat of arms.

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Vol 38 no 1, Feb 2016
Vol 37 no 3, Aug 2015
Vol 36 no 2, May 2014
Hilda Rix Nicholas: a cosmopolitan artist in 1920s Sydney
By Julie Petersen   |   May 2014   |   Vol 36 no 2

Hilda Rix Nicholas was one of Australia’s most successful international artists. When she returned to Australia in 1918, she brought her magnificent paintings infused with post- impressionist light and colour to a generation of young Australian artists, yet her triumphant homecoming had been marred by the los...

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Vol 36 no 1, February 2014
Australian cartography: a numismatic perspective
By Peter Lane   |   February 2014   |   Vol 36 no 1

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...

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Vol 35 no 3, August 2013
Vol 35 no 1, February 2013
The IHC bronze kangaroos
By Peter Lane   |   February 2013   |   Vol 35 no 1

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The Australiana Society acknowledges Australia’s First Nations Peoples – the First Australians – as the Traditional Owners and Custodians of this land and gives respect to the Elders – past and present – and through them to all Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.