The York Street Synagogue Ark

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...

The Squatter’s Delight, or ‘A Man’s Chair’

Robert Griffin makes the case for the introduction of the squatter’s chair – a robust easy chair with swing-out leg rests – as an idea imported from India in the early 19th century. These chairs found a home on the shady verandahs of homesteads, particularly in Queensland and NSW, where the lan...

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...

A Gift for the Queen: Andrew Lenehan’s Casket

Zealous colonists wanted those ‘at home’ to know how economically successful the British colonies in Australia had become. When gold was found in 1851, the Governor of New South Wales sent specimens of the first gold, in boxes made using selected colonial timbers by Irish-born cabinetmaker Andrew...

President’s Update

The year is off to a great start. The National Tour conducted in the ACT was fully subscribed with the maximum 40 members and state events have already been held in Tasmania and Victoria. Part of the Victorian event was a curator-led presentation by Emma Busowsky prior to viewing the Bendigo Art Gall...

Scrimshaw – real or fake?

Scrimshaw, the ancient art of the mariner is a most important part of our heritage which is very collectable. At times, scrimshaw achieves very high prices at auction in Australia and internationally. This article relates solely to Australian scrimshaw which is different in many ways to American or in...

Exhibition: Charles Rodius, State Library of NSW

The first retrospective of ‘19th-century Australia’s best unknown artist’, Charles Rodius (1802–1860), bringing together 92 original watercolours, drawings and prints, will be shown at the State Library of NSW. While the host library holds the largest collection, other notable examples are held in the N...

Book review: Tokens of Love, Loss and Disrespect 1700–1850

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 ...

National tour to Canberra and Regional NSW

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...

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.

The workshop of Sydney silversmith William Kerr

A descendant of his sister Rebecca wrote about William Kerr in Australiana over 20 years ago, presenting new material obtained from family sources.1 With the help of other descendants, Yvonne Barber expands on this earlier work, beginning with the apprenticeship of William Kerr. She provides det...

Early Sydney silver flatware

Four early Australian silver flatware items – two spoons and two forks – engraved with the three initials ‘WEB’ present a challenge warranting research. Whose engraved initials (WEB) are they and when were the items made and engraved? Christine Erratt offers an answer. Four flatware1items with...

Australiana: Designing a Nation, Bendigo Art Gallery 18 March to 25 June 2023

Bendigo Art Gallery has drawn on its collections, the Australiana Fund, other collections and especially the National Gallery of Victoria to mount a new survey of Australiana from British settlement to today. Obviously it cannot cover every aspect of Australiana, nor every way artists and crafts...

Australiana Society Tour of Bendigo and Castlemaine

Victorian chairman Robert Stevens reports on a November 2022 tour to the Central Goldfields region.

President’s Update

Your Board trusts that you have enjoyed exploring our new website, taken the opportunity to review it in detail and researched past articles. Members’ feedback has been most encouraging! As with any change, there is always the odd issue; we are doing our best to fix them and will further enhance the site base...

The 2022 Peter Walker Fine Arts Writing Award

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...

An Itinerant Australian Colonial Billiard Table

The National Museum of Australia in Canberra has purchased an Australian billiard table, carved in high relief with multiple panels of scenes of colonial life, and its matching marking board. Its price of $1,100,000 sets a new record for a piece of Australian furniture. The NMA is not known for collecting Austr...

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,...

Adelaide House, Alice Springs: an outback house museum

Curator Judith McKay focuses on a unique house museum in the Northern Territory, originally planned in 1920 by the Rev. John Flynn of Flying Doctor fame as a model outback hospital. Its most remarkable feature was a passive ventilation system designed to cool the building on the Coolgardie safe princ...

Spanish Craftsmen at New Norcia Abbey in Western Australia part 2: John Casellas

Spanish monks established the Benedictine mission at New Norcia in Western Australia in 1846. Following on from her article last year on Isidro Oriol,1 Dr Dorothy Erickson concludes her series on the Spanish craftsmen who worked on buildings and furniture for the monastic community. Here she examines...

Kitchen inspirations: the recipe books of a Queensland flour manufacturer

As far as eating paraphernalia goes, Australiana has previously covered dining tables and chairs, sideboards, ceramic plates, silver table ornaments, Splayds and even tea towels. Megan Martin demonstrates that it is about time we looked at recipe books, particularly as these Queensland examples ...

Unlocking the Story of Doulton’s ‘Australia 1886’ Vase

Queensland collectors Jon and Yvonne Douglas explain how their collecting of Doulton ceramics developed and how, as they read more and more about their passion, their interests deepened. Here they present their research into one particular example with Australian connections, a vase made in 1886 for the Colonia...

President’s Update

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...

William Knox D'Arcy: Art Collector and Patron

William Knox D’Arcy (1849–1917) is remembered today as an indefatigable adventurer, who through financial daring and
extraordinary good fortune, became the ‘founder’ of the modern oil industry in the Middle East. However, there is another
facet to his life, as the ex-Rockhampton solicitor who became a...

I Opine it’s a ‘Pine’

From the foundation of the colonies, local cabinetmakers experimented with using the wide range of native timbers. Bob Fredman discusses a chest of drawers, most likely made about 1900 in Bundaberg, Queensland and probably by a local cabinet maker of Germanic heritage, who liked to use contrasting timbers with ...

The Paris Exposition Universelle, the Suez Canal and a Gold Sphinx Brooch

November 2022 marks the centenary of the discovery of the virtually intact tomb of King Tutankhamun, who reigned from about 1332 to 1323 BC. The pharaoh’s burial goods created a worldwide sensation focussed on ancient Egypt, which has long fascinated Europeans, partly because of its Biblical connections and p...

Arnott’s Kookaburra – a Mystery Biscuit

We sometimes forget that some artefacts are ephemeral. Paul Gregson reminds us that a biscuit can be a nostalgic piece of Australiana, though it may only exist now in images.

Queensland to a T Collection and Exhibition, State Library of Queensland

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...

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. ...

Mary Jones: a Mysterious Artist in Queensland

Brisbane painter and art teacher Mary E. Jones has escaped recognition for 130 years. She would not be alone in that fate: over time, many aspiring painters and their works disappear from history. Timothy Roberts reveals some details about Miss Jones’s career and her impact as a woman artist in Brisbane betwe...

Above the Trenches? Cast-metal Aeroplanes of the 1940s

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?

Considering a Curious Carving

Artists draw inspiration from many sources. Glenn Cooke examines at how a 20th-century Queensland wood carver took his design inspiration from an historical French pottery plaque some 400 years old, finding what seems to be the exact example he used.

Book reviews

BOOK REVIEW BY MICHAEL LECHRuth Lane Poole: a woman of influence. Canberra Museum and Gallery, 2021, 58 pages. BOOK REVIEW BY ANNE-MARIE VAN DE VENChristine Stewart,
Collits’ Inn: Uncovering the Past, Tellwell, Australia 2021 ISBN 978-0-2288-3720-6

President’s Update

It is indeed pleasing to see members honoured for their services to the community. In the 2022 Queen’s Birthday Honours, Mrs Phyllis Murphy of Melbourne and Mr Alan Landis of Sydney were recognised with Member of the Order of Australia (AM) and Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) respectively. Both richly d...

An American in the East

In America as in England, tea drinking became highly fashionable in the 18th century. The duty imposed on tea imported into Britain’s North American colonies became a catalyst for revolution, highlighted by the Boston Tea Partyin 1773. Many discrete meetings of revolutionaries were fuelled by nothing more inc...

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...

1950s souvenir jewellery and art with Indigenous motifs

Finding more examples of the silver brooch with Indigenous motifs that she discussed in our May issue, Christine Erratt delved further into their history. In the National Archives of Australia, Christine uncovered the 1954 design registration applications.
Six different designs, of which five were inspired b...

Early school samplers from Van Diemen’s Land

As part of their education in useful arts, schoolgirls sewed their own individual samplers, which are also important indicators of progress in educational methods and reach. The format is fairly standard, with the letters of the alphabet in either or both lower and upper case and basic numbers, plus the gi...

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...

Designs by Murdoch at the House of Georges

Fashion designer Margaret Murdoch (1912–1999) has been eclipsed by other members of the Murdoch family. In 1938 she went to London to gain experience in fashion design. Her move to the fashion capital of Paris on the eve of World War II led to disruption of her career path, with two stints of internment ...

Splayds – ‘the runcible spoon that captivated the world’

Invented in 1948 and manufactured 'from the early 1950s, Splades or Splayds were a favourite gift for shower teas, weddings and Mothers’ Day in 1960s and 1970s Australia. We were vaguely aware that they might be an Australian innovation, but that wasn’t part of their advertising – they were prom...

Thomas Griffiths, a Queensland woodworker

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...

Timber trays – fun and functional

When furniture or crib board collecting becomes too hard, because of either their cost or scarcity or both, the average Australiana collector can turn to drinks trays. They can turn to drinks too, but this article is just about the trays.

Australiana Society Sydney Basin Tour, March 2022

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...

Madame Henry, Juliette Lebeau-Lopes-Rastoul-Henry

Visions of a Republic. The work of Lucien Henry, the lavishly illustrated 2001 book produced for an exhibition on the designs and art of Lucien Henry (1850–1896), devotes more words to describing a photograph of the couple’s apartment in Darlinghurst (plate 1) than it does to describing his wife Juliette. Y...

Saving Currajong

Many buildings in Australia have been recognised for their architectural or historical significance, or their association with important individuals. Some have been preserved, and some have not. Jillian Dwyer relates the story of Currajong in Melbourne’s east, the Italianate villa built by the prominent colon...

Indigenous motifs on a silver brooch

We often recognise Australiana by the presence of motifs depicting Australia’s unique flora and fauna and, especially in the 19th century, representations of Indigenous figures. Anthropologists studied Indigenous people, while the things they made – much of it, what we would describe today as art – were r...

King Albert’s ‘Birthday Book’

After Albert I King of the Belgians refused safe passage to Kaiser Wilhelm’s troops to attack France, Germany invaded neutral Belgium on 4 August 1914. Britain, bound by an 1839 treaty to support Belgium’s neutrality, declared war on Germany the same day. Australian Prime Minister Joseph Cook offered his go...

A presentation casket with carving by John K. Blogg, 1915

The box seen here shows the superb carving of John Kendrick Blogg, a successful and entrepreneurial industrial chemist who was born in 1851 in Canada, settled in the Surrey Hills region of Victoria in 1877 and died in 1936. His day job involved making perfumes and extracting essential oils. Family legend has it...

Contributing to Australiana

The Australiana Society aims to support ‘researching, preserving and collecting Australia’s heritage’. As our readers have a range of interests and live in different states, so we try to cater to all interests and regions. However, we rely on what you submit. Everyone is welcome to submit articles for con...