Two early arks held in the museum collection of The Great Synagogue in Elizabeth Street, Sydney are impressive examples of Australian furniture. Their distinct Egyptian style could have been a source of inspiration for the architectural style of the York Street Synagogue (1844). In her search for the...
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...
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 Wy...
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...
Melbourne’s International Exhibition of 1880 was a huge event in its day, allowing Victoria to parade the colony’s achievements to the world. The magnificent building designed by Joseph Reed has hosted many important events for Victoria and Australia. Today, with the gardens, it is UNESCO listed as one of t...
A friend of mine wanted to see a mosaic mural in the Crypt at Anzac Square in Brisbane (now operated by the State Library of Queensland). For most of the year it is protected by an information panel, but the mural is on view for just two weeks in January ― the month when the artist and craft worker Don Ross (...
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...
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...
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...
The November 2018 issue featured the carved furniture of a young woman, Alice Maud Golley (1884–1961) who lived an isolated life with her immediate family on remote Wedge Island in the Spencer Gulf of South Australia. Golley’s furniture is a virtuoso display of skill and grace, yet she was untrained. Among ...
Glenda King, Maude Poynter: painter and potter. Tasmanian Chapter of the Australiana Society Inc., Hobart, 2018. Soft cover, 108 pages, plentiful colour and black and white illustrations. ISBN 978-0-646-98281- 6,
Beleura, the house and garden on the Mornington Peninsula on the southern shore of Port Phillip Bay, is an estate left to the people of Victoria by John ‘Jack’ Morton Tallis (1911–1996), the youngest son of Sir George Tallis of J C Williamson theatres fame... Here was a mystery: how did John Tallis know K...
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...
Trevor Kennedy AM has always been larger than life than most people, both in his business career and now his eclectic Australiana collection. Born and educated in Western Australia, he became a prominent Australian journalist, businessman and company director, serving on many company boards. As a journalist Tre...
Edinburgh-born John Carmichael arrived in Sydney in 1825, living and working there for over 30 years producing landscapes, portraits, maps, billheads, musical scores, illustrations and some of Australia’s first postage stamps. His works provide a revealing and valuable record of life and times in colonial Syd...
A beautiful late summer’s evening greeted guests to the 2014 Annual Australiana Dinner held this year in the junior common room of Edmund Blacket’s splendid mid-1850s neo-gothic building, St Paul’s College, at the University of Sydney. One of the first university colleges to be built in Australia, the san...
Colouring photographs by hand added to the attraction of black and white photographs in the 19th century. An 1870s view of Government House from across Farm Cove in Sydney Harbour not only has been coloured, but the artist has added some extra touches, including a gondola cruising off the Governor’s residence...