List of Articles in Issue Vol 38 no 1, Feb 2016

Lady Bowen's Irish harp brooch - a Queensland colonial treasure rediscovered

In our May 2015 issue, Dianne Byrne identified a brooch presented in 1867 to Lady Bowen, wife of Queensland’s first Governor, in a photograph held in the National Library. Further detective work has revealed that the brooch is still held by Lady Bowen’s descendants in England. We illustrate it now for the f...

Mattie Furphy - dainty but determined

Dorothy Erickson documents the life and work of Mattie Furphy (1878–1948), a Victorian who moved to Perth in 1902 to become a prominent Western Australian artist and designer.

The cabinet maker and the carver: George Thwaites and Daniel Livingstone

Prestigious Melbourne cabinet maker Geo. Thwaites & Son operated from 1842 to 1889, providing high-class furniture for Victoria’s mansions, homesteads and prominent institutional and public buildings. Today the firm is best remembered for its contracts to furnish Government House in 1854 and again in 1875 and...

The Champion's Belt of Isaac Reid, heavyweight prize-fighter

The National Gallery of Australia holds a three-piece silver buckle that originally formed the central element of a Champion’s Boxing Belt presented to prize-fighter Isaac Reid in 1847 (plate 1). This remarkable belt was made by Sydney silversmiths J.J. Cohen & Son1 and engraved by John Carmichael. Until rece...

Ernest Worrall and his Anglo-Boer War khaki keepsake

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 ...

German trench art from Victoria

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.

Book review: Sasha Grishin, ‘S T Gill and his audiences‘

Samuel Thomas Gill died melodramatically, aged 62, on the steps on the Melbourne Post Office at half past four on Wednesday 27 October 1880. A policeman recorded that he “was in a most filthy state and covered with vermin” while a search of the pockets found pills which identified him. An autopsy revealed t...

Book review: Eva Czernis-Ryl, ‘Hendrik Forster Silversmith Designer Maker’

During the second decade of the new millennium, many pioneers of the crafts movement in Australia, which began to flourish in the 1970s, will celebrate four decades of working in studio practices with their chosen materials.

Peter Walker Fine Art Writing Award winners