Vol 44 no 2, May 2022
Breaking the mould
By Robert Griffin   |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

Wet conditions in humid climates, and especially with the recent floods in eastern Australia, exacerbate the problem of household damp and mould. For collectors, this is likely to affect sensitive items, such as furniture and works of art on paper. So remember to check your collection regularly, and follow some...

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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 2, May 2022
Photographing your Collection
By John Wade & David Bedford   |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

There are sound reasons why you should have good photographs of items in your collection, whether as a record, for research, for publication, for sale and for insurance.

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Vol 44 no 2, May 2022
Looking for Paintings on Gum Leaves
By    |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

Paintings on gum leaves are a unique Australian tradition, which began in the 1850s or 1860s and still continues today. The earliest practitioner recorded is Arthur William Eustace (1820–1907), who was born in England and arrived in Victoria with his family in 1851. He found work as a shepherd near Chiltern i...

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Vol 44 no 2, May 2022
Spanish Craftsmen for the New Norcia Abbey in Western Australia. Part 1, Isidro Oriol
By Dorothy Erickson   |   May 2022   |   Vol 44 no 2

Most craftsmen who emigrated to colonial Australia were trained in the English, Scottish, Irish or German traditions. In Western Australia, several Spanish craftsmen were attracted by the monastery established by their compatriot Bendictine monks at New Norcia. Western Australian craftsmen, mostly using jarrah ...

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Vol 44 no 1, February 2022
Book reviews
By    |   February 2022   |   Vol 44 no 1

JOURNAL REVIEW BY DR ROSS JOHNSTON, Queensland History Journal, vol. 24, no. 11, November 2021, (Journal of The Royal Historical Society of Queensland); BOOK REVIEW BY DR LINDA YOUNG, Fringe, Frog & Tassel: The Arts of the Trimmings-Maker in Interior Decoration. By Annabel Westman; BOOK REVIEW BY DR DAVID BEDF...

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Vol 44 no 1, February 2022
Trevor John Kennedy AM 24.6.1942 – 28.11.2021
By Lesley Garrett, Anne Schofield & John Hawkins   |   February 2022   |   Vol 44 no 1

Lesley Garrett, a long-standing family friend, fondly recalls Trevor Kennedy's life and passion for collecting, amassing the most important collection of Australian decorative arts ever assembled... Anne Schofield, the source of much of the spectacular jewellery acquired for his collection, has her own distinct...

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Vol 44 no 1, February 2022
Rosa Fiveash’s Quarantine Camp 1919: a not so new ‘normal’
By Jo Vandepeer   |   February 2022   |   Vol 44 no 1

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

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Vol 44 no 1, February 2022
Henning Rathjen: Victorian art potter 1948–1968
By Anne Johnson & Anthony Armstrong   |   February 2022   |   Vol 44 no 1

In the aftermath of World War II, many commercial potteries were established in Australia to satisfy the market disrupted by hostilities, particularly for Japanese and European imports. While some of these new commercial potteries were established by immigrants from war-ravaged Europe, Henning Alfred Rathjen (1...

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Vol 44 no 1, February 2022
Through the looking glass – identifying W. H. Rocke & Co’s second Melbourne International Exhibition 1880 drawing-room cabinet
By Andrew Montana   |   February 2022   |   Vol 44 no 1

Objects and art shown at international exhibitions always attract a premium. Often, they really were ‘showpieces’, specially made to demonstrate the maker’s skills, ability and cutting-edge design. Three room suites of W. H. Rocke’s furniture displayed at the prestigious Melbourne International Exhibiti...

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Vol 44 no 1, February 2022
Teaching artists by copying the Masters
By David Hansen   |   February 2022   |   Vol 44 no 1

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...

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Vol 44 no 1, February 2022
Jack and Achilles: a classical source for Benjamin Duterrau’s Native taking a Kangaroo?
By David Hansen   |   February 2022   |   Vol 44 no 1

Artists in early Australia were usually trained in Britain and Europe in the Classical tradition going back to ancient Greece and Rome. David Hansen explores the possibility that, in the composition of his paintings created in Van Diemen’s Land, Benjamin Duterrau was influenced by Renaissance and Classical mo...

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Vol 44 no 1, February 2022
John Glover through the Claude Glass
By Glynnis Stevenson   |   February 2022   |   Vol 44 no 1

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...

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Vol 44 no 1, February 2022
Making Good
By Anna Ridley   |   February 2022   |   Vol 44 no 1

Making Good: Convict artisans in exile is a new National Trust (NSW) exhibition at Old Government House, Parramatta NSW from 5 March till 27 November, charting the lives of convicts and their impact on the colony.

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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 4, November 2021
Australiana Society tours 2021: Ballarat and Camperdown Tour
By Robert Stevens   |   November 2021   |   Vol 43 no 4

Australiana Society members visited the Ballarat region of Victoria in May, as part of a tour carefully planned by Victorian branch chair Robert Stevens. Luckily, it fell into a gap between COVID lockdowns, and gave members from several states a chance to get out, mingle and enjoy what the Victorian Central Gol...

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Vol 43 no 4, November 2021
Australiana Society tours 2021: Bathurst Heritage Weekend
By John Wade & Yvonne Barber   |   November 2021   |   Vol 43 no 4

Postponed several times due to Covid-19 restrictions, our plans for a visit to Bathurst in the NSW Central Tablelands, lands of the Wiradyuri Nation, finally came to fruition from 30 April to 2 May 2021, with the maximum
50 participants from five states taking part. Others were unable to attend for fear of not...

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Vol 43 no 4, November 2021
Book reviews
By Claire Blakey & Nat Williams   |   November 2021   |   Vol 43 no 4

Petra ten-Doesschate Chu and Max Donnelly with Andrew Montana and Suzanne Veldink, Daniel Cottier: Designer, Decorator, Dealer.
Paul Mellon Centre for Studies in British Art, Yale University Press, New Haven CT 2021. Hard cover,
256 pp, 200 illustrations, Booktopia price $59 plus postage.
Philip...

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Vol 43 no 4, November 2021
‘Royal memories of Canberra’; repatriating the Duke of Gloucester’s 1946 collection Scenes of Canberra by John Eldershaw
By Sam Nichols   |   November 2021   |   Vol 43 no 4

John Roy Eldershaw (1892–1973) was a landscape artist who worked primarily in watercolours. During his lifetime, he
was proclaimed to be ‘destined to leave unmistakable footprints in the sands of time’. In 1973 Sir Erik Langker, the arts administrator and influential member of
the Sydney arts establishm...

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Vol 43 no 4, November 2021
Australian flora and fauna on silver spoons 1971–2021
By Christine Erratt   |   November 2021   |   Vol 43 no 4

The late Professor Kenneth Cavill’s article published in Australiana1 identified about 50 spoons of Australian and British manufacture, marking royal
and other occasions, with heraldic motifs, maps of Australia or Tasmania and flora and fauna, made either in factories or in craft workshops. Overlapping almos...

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Vol 43 no 4, November 2021
The use of Australian tulip wood in Australian furniture and boxes
By David Bedford   |   November 2021   |   Vol 43 no 4

Decorative timber inlay work became popular in British and European furniture and other wooden items in the 18th century. European exploration of the so-called New World tropics and subsequent colonisation gave access to a greatly increased range of superb cabinet timbers. Cabinetmakers initially concentrated o...

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Vol 43 no 4, November 2021
Meshach Stevens, artist, painter and tradesman
By Robert Stevens   |   November 2021   |   Vol 43 no 4

Between arriving in Hobart Town as a convict on 3 August 1831 and the last evidence of his residing in Van Diemen’s Land in 1847, Meshach Stevens painted a very competent copy of a famous print after William John Huggins titled Northern Whale Fishery, published in London in 1829 (plate 1).1 For almost ...

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Vol 43 no 4, November 2021
Queensland 1859 Secession’ pottery medals
By Geoff Ford   |   November 2021   |   Vol 43 no 4

Glen went on to tell us, in a joking manner, that he had made these fake 1859 Secession Medals in 1977 for fun in the hope of making some money while he was a student working in the Visual Arts department at the Darling Downs Institute of Advanced Education in
Toowoomba (now the University of Southern Queensla...

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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 3, August 2021
‘Angels in the Studio’ in Western Australia part 4: Those who stayed
By Dorothy Erickson   |   August 2021   |   Vol 43 no 3

Dr Erickson concludes her story of the professional women artists who commenced working in Western Australia before World War I. All were born in South Australia or England, coming to Western Australia later, most as young adults and often with other family members. Their careers began in the heady years of the...

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Vol 43 no 3, August 2021
Allen Duckworth, woodworker and native timbers crusader
By Yvonne Barber & John Wade   |   August 2021   |   Vol 43 no 3

In the preceding article, David Bedford identified four Australian manufacturers of cribbage boards: Grose Manufacturing Co of Brisbane; Clipsal, a brand name of Gerard Industries in Adelaide; John Sands & Co, founded in Sydney as Sands & Kenny in 1851; and Crown Mulga made by A.W.G. Davey & Sons Lt...

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Vol 43 no 3, August 2021
Australian cribbage boards – an affordable collectable
By David Bedford   |   August 2021   |   Vol 43 no 3

Both plain and novelty cribbage boards have been produced around the world for about 400 years. Australian-made cribbage boards can only be post–1788 and at this stage I know of no boards dating before the early 1800s, though very plain boards are difficult to date accurately. By the mid-19th century, many no...

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Vol 43 no 3, August 2021
The Ransom sampler
By Carol Bacon   |   August 2021   |   Vol 43 no 3

A sampler, and the von Stieglitz family Bible in which it was kept for many years, were sold at auction in Launceston in 2016. The sampler consists of stitching on a square of linen cloth 6 inches (15.2 cm) in width by 61⁄2 inches (16.5 cm) in length, edged with blue ribbon (plate 1). The stitches used are la...

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Vol 43 no 3, August 2021
Victoria’s earliest potteries
By Gregory Hill   |   August 2021   |   Vol 43 no 3

Greg Hill’s new research, using contemporary newspapers and other resources now easily available on Trove, has found a raft of previously unknown potteries operating in Victoria in the 19th century. These push back the dates of Victorian pottery manufacture into the 1840s. Many examples of these wares however...

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Vol 43 no 3, August 2021
Exhibition review: Paradise Lost – Thomas Griffiths Wainewright
By Scott Carlin   |   August 2021   |   Vol 43 no 3

Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (1794–1847) was early colonial Australia’s most sophisticated and glamourising portraitist. The current exhibition,
Paradise Lost – Thomas Griffiths Wainewright, at the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery (TMAG) features 40 works by Wainewright together with contextual works by ...

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Vol 43 no 3, August 2021
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
Casuarina Timbers in Australia
By David Bedford   |   May 2021   |   Vol 43 no 2

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...

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Vol 43 no 2, May 2021
‘Angels in the Studio’ in Western Australia part 3: Passing through
By Dorothy Erickson   |   May 2021   |   Vol 43 no 2

Continuing our story of the women artists working in Western Australia before World War I, we will now turn to three ‘Angels’ who came, saw and conquered, but did not stay. They were all single, peripatetic, somewhat bohemian and left their mark in several societies. Marie Anne Tuck (1866–1947); Florence ...

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Vol 43 no 2, May 2021
Feedback
By John Wade   |   May 2021   |   Vol 43 no 2

Robert Stevens, in ‘William Paul Dowling: artist, artist-photographer and photographer’ in our November 2020 issue, and using information provided by Irish genealogist Dr Paul MacCotter, suggested that Dowling may have possibly been the ‘William Dowling’ baptised 26 December 1822 at St Mary’s Roman Ca...

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Vol 43 no 2, May 2021
James Whitesides’ chairs for the Parliament of Tasmania
By John Short   |   May 2021   |   Vol 43 no 2

The cabinet maker James Whitesides (c 1803–1890) arrived in Hobart from Ireland in 1832. He came to the colony with established woodworking skills and in the company of fellow artisans William Hamilton and John McLoughlin. The three opened business premises as Hamilton & Co in Argyle Street, but in Octobe...

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Vol 43 no 2, May 2021
Mauchline Ware and Melbourne
By Nicola Kissane   |   May 2021   |   Vol 43 no 2

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...

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Vol 43 no 2, May 2021
Don Ross, artist and craft worker
By Glenn R Cooke   |   May 2021   |   Vol 43 no 2

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 (...

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Vol 43 no 2, May 2021
William Frederick Ward: engraver, heraldic designer, manufacturing jeweller, banknote designer, cinema proprietor, handwriting expert
By Yvonne Barber   |   May 2021   |   Vol 43 no 2

When Yvonne Barber first proposed writing an article about William Frederick Ward, your editor’s response was ‘Who?’ Readers will react the same way, yet W F Ward was involved in the engraving, design and manufacture of silverware for 40 years. He designed the arms of the City of Sydney, won the competiti...

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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 2, May 2021
The Browns of Montrose, near Mintaro
By Jo Vandpeer   |   May 2021   |   Vol 43 no 2

This darling little painting came into the possession of a friend – a friend with a very good eye. It came with no provenance, but it has since revealed a South Australian story. This is a tale of changing fortunes, one that spans the scope of Victorian society from servant, Cambridge scholar, muleteer, garde...

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Vol 43 no 1, February 2021
Book Reviews
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Vol 43 no 1, February 2021
Update from the President
By Colin Thomas   |   February 2021   |   Vol 43 no 1

I trust all members enjoyed a wonderful festive season and new year with family and friends. Who would have thought at this time last year that 2020 would present us with the challenges that it did? Hopefully 2021 will prove to be more the ‘norm’. As I write this, regional COVID outbreaks appear to have bee...

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Vol 43 no 1, February 2021
Much more than an E
By David Hansen   |   February 2021   |   Vol 43 no 1

The State Library of New South Wales recently purchased a rare original ornithological watercolour by Elizabeth Gould (1804–1841), formerly in the collection of the late James Fairfax AC. This adds to the collection of manuscript letters and other original materials the Library has acquired relating to this i...

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Vol 43 no 1, February 2021
The Goulds in Tasmania
By John Wade   |   February 2021   |   Vol 43 no 1

In 1832, John Gould produced A Century of birds from the Himalaya Mountains, the plates ‘drawn from nature and on stone by E. Gould’, and five years later, five volumes on the birds of Europe with 448 lithographic plates, most by Elizabeth Gould with 68 by Edward Lear. The bird specimens his brothers- in-la...

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Vol 43 no 1, February 2021
The Scheding Index of Australian Art
By Stephen Scheding   |   February 2021   |   Vol 43 no 1

Mostly out of self-interest, we love to help people enhance their research skills, and thus advance knowledge of Australiana. Almost everyone will recognise themselves in this story. Art historian Stephen Scheding had lots of information on artists but needed to organise it, so he created an archive. Then he ma...

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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.