The Australiana Society's Tasmanian tour 2015

Australiana Society members were privileged to see, touch and experience many and varied treasures on our Tasmanian tour. Here we showcase the welcome and rare opportunities extended to those who participated, and encourage other members to consider creating a future tour showcasing your state or region, offeri...

Book Review: Dorothy Erickson, ‘Inspired by Light’

Published as the first of two hardcover volumes (the second will cover the period from 1950 to now), this is Dr Dorothy Erickson’s most ambitious publishing venture. Exploring the work of designers and makers in Western Australia since the founding of the Swan River Colony in 1829 until 1969, it is her most s...

Book Review: John Maynard, ‘True Light and Shade’

Over the last 20 years or so interest in convict artist Joseph Lycett (1775–1828) has steadily quickened and heightened in Australian popular culture through the influence of various published works and exhibitions. He is now held in high regard by art and cultural historians.

President's Report

Treasurer's Report

The Peter Walker Fine Art Writing Award 2014 Judge's Report

Richard Batholomew Smith's Wunderkammer

R.B. Smith made his model of the Strasburg Clock to celebrate the centenary of British settlement. It was hailed as a “scientific triumph of Australian workmanship”. At first, Smith exhibited it privately “like a fat woman in a country fair”1 until it found a home in Sydney’s Technological Museum. The...

Sir Donald Bradman and Withersfield

Cricket is in the news with the Ashes being played in England. Sir Donald Bradman (1908–2001) is respected as the world’s best and most famous cricketer, both in Australia and the United Kingdom. His grandfather, Charles Bradman, lived in the small Suffolk village of Withersfield until he emigrated to Austr...

Eureka and Victoria's chair of state

In the 19th century, an appropriately draped “chair of state” under a canopy was deployed on formal occasions when the monarch or her vice-regal representative was present. These chairs were conspicuously larger than any surrounding chairs, acknowledging the status of the occupant. Dr La Nauze traces the hi...

Book Review: Robert Purdie, ‘Narrative of the Wreck of HMS Porpoise’

Hordern House continues their excellent service in the publication of early colonial history by releasing Robert Purdie’s Narrative of the Wreck of HMS Porpoise hot on the heels of Elizabeth Ellis’s book on The Sydney Punchbowl in the Mitchell Library. Here the subject is a first-hand description of the fou...

Book Review: David Kelly, ‘Convict and Free’

David Kelly sets out in this book to chart the history of 100 or so master cabinet-makers working in New South Wales up to 1850. His introduction discusses that bland sentence in some detail, meticulously defining those terms and the parameters of his research. Then Kelly outlines the structure of the book, sou...

From the editor

Adrian Feint's flowers and fishermen: the Lesley Godden collection

A collection of flower paintings by Adrian Feint, belonging to his friend and fishing companion Les Godden, came to light last year when they were sold at auction. Catriona Quinn researches the background of this collection, the work of Adrian Feint and his artistic friendships.

Finding Firnhaber treasures

Colonial Australian jewellery is rarely marked with the name of its maker or retailer. Perth jewellery dealer Trevor Hancock sticks his neck out and attributes several pieces to the German-born Adelaide jeweller C. E. Firnhaber, based on stylistic similarities of the works. All of them are illustrated here.

A chance beginning: the Lyons collection of decorative art

The Art Gallery of South Australia is showcasing for the first time over 50 examples of Australian decorative arts given to the Gallery by Adelaide psychiatrist Dr Robert Lyons, who had assembled one of the finest private collections of South Australian decorative arts.

Backchat

The first update to my book Convict and Free: the Master Furniture-makers of NSW 1788–1851 will be available on CD in December, with at least two new chapters, on Thomas Mercer Booth and John McMahon. However, Australiana members may be interested to learn now that a reader from Ireland has provided me with d...

Lady Bowen's Irish harp brooch - a missing piece of Queensland colonial jewellery

The practice of presenting diplomatic gifts to dignitaries goes back to antiquity. As the much-admired wife of the governor of the colonies of Queensland, New Zealand and Victoria, Diamantina, Lady Bowen received some significant pieces of jewellery and metalwork. These gifts were frequently, and often fulsomel...

A rare Feint format: "Shells" designed and painted 1947 for "Jo" Fakhry

This soft-paste porcelain mug, 8.7 cm high and 9 cm diameter, is painted in overglaze enamels on a Wedgwood “Barlaston” blank dated 1947. Feint’s choice of this Wedgwood form, together with the incorporation of the date 1947 and the letters J F as key elements in the design, suggests an awareness of the n...

Wartime quilts

World War I began 101 years ago. Galleries all around the world, including many in Australia, are having exhibitions with memories of this war. The Gallipoli campaign is particularly significant to Australians and New Zealanders this year, with the centenary on the first landing on 25 April 1915, and the withdr...

Backchat

On 1 January 2014, the University of Ballarat and the Gippsland campus of Monash University amalgamated to form Federation University Australia. The ceremonial mace formerly used at the University of Ballarat is currently in use as the ceremonial mace for the new university... It was not John [Joseph] Thomas Ha...

The Ashes bail

The Ashes! Is it a bail, or a veil? Tom Thompson looks at a hidden treasure from Australia’s sporting history.

Reminders of the Great War

The centenary of the First World War has Lesley Garrett bringing out her family’s mementoes of “the war to end all wars” – and regretting the loss of their context.

James Semple Kerr, Miriam Hamilton and David Ell

Some people are or have been particularly influential in the development of appreciation and understanding of our heritage in Australia. Here we pay tribute to three individuals who contributed significantly, each of them in different ways, and who will be sadly missed both personally and professionally.

The Fereday service

The Fereday service is a rare example of armorial porcelain tableware relating to colonial Australia, bearing the name, position and crest of the owner Dudley Fereday, first Sheriff of Van Diemen’s Land (1823–33) (plate 1). Although none of the surviving pieces bears a mark identifying the manufacturer, the...

John Jardine in Australia

After a short career in the British army, John Jardine, the youngest brother of the eminent Scottish ornithologist Sir William Jardine, in 1839 decided to emigrate to Australia. In 1861, he served as a police magistrate and gold commissioner at Rockhampton, then became a pioneer settler at Somerset on Cape York...

Book Review: Blamire Young

Author Stephen Marshall is to be congratulated on writing this carefully compiled compendium of (William) Blamire Young’s watercolours, for while in his own words he is a passionate art lover, he modestly refutes being an expert on art history. Nevertheless, over 650 pages he has assembled an impressive catal...

Book Review: Jewels on Queen

In 1970, Anne Schofield opened the first shop in Australia dealing exclusively in antique jewellery (in Queen Street, Woollahra, hence the book title) and has been dealing from there ever since. She is well-known from her appearances at fairs and in the media, for her support foreword which introduces the reade...

From the President

Australiana magazine has been presenting important information and original research about Australian decorative arts and heritage for 36 years, and is now the leading publication in the field. While we promised a bumper issue in November, I can now announce an even better alternative – our first monograph, t...

Gold Rush jewellers of Melbourne and Dunedin: Wagner & Woollett, Lamborn & Wagner and Wollett and Hewitt

Jewellers William Lamborn, Leopold Wagner and Samuel Woollett all arrived at Melbourne in the first few years after the discovery of gold in Victoria in 1851. Recent research has uncovered new information on these jewellers and their firms – Wagner & Woollett, Lamborn & Wagner and Woollett & Hewitt. The new i...

Miss Purnell's wildflower screen

Another of the talented women artists who came to the colony of Western Australia was Annie Purnell. She was not a professional artist, but the “Angel in the House” for her bachelor brother, the Anglican minister the Reverend Robert Purnell. As was typical of gentlewomen of the time, she would have been tra...

A ‘Poket Time Keeper’, John Arnold, Joseph Banks and Constantine John Phipps

In the 18th century, a time keeper that would keep accurate time at sea was essential to find longitude. Britain’s Board of Longitude offered a massive prize of £20,000 for the inventor of such a device, contributing to major advances in timekeeping. John Hawkins argues that a time keeper by London watchmake...

A Fine Possession: jewellery and identity, Powerhouse Museum Sydney

This spectacular exhibition of jewellery spanning cultures and millennia is billed as the most ambitious jewellery exhibition the Powerhouse Museum (part of the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences) has ever staged. With 700 exhibits drawn from public and private collections across Australia, it takes several vi...

A Berlin woolwork picture

tracing the provenance of a Berlin woolwork picture now held in the Powerhouse Museum led to information about the involvement of the Agricultural society of New south Wales in setting up the 1870 Exhibition in sydney, a bronze medal awarded at that event, the winner of the medal and maker of this extraordinary...

Annual dinner and lecture 2014

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...

Taking tea in the colonies

Tea drinking, that very British and colonial habit, is ingrained in our Australian culture and regarded by many as an essential daily ritual. tea is cheap and plentiful today, but this was not always the case.

Joseph Hamblin, cabinet-maker and piano maker

dorothy erickson’s research for her new book Inspired by Light and Land: Designers and Makers in Western Australia 1829–1969 has uncovered more information about objects made in Western Australia and their makers. Her previous articles published in Australiana on Amy Harvey, William Howitt, Charles May and ...

A.S. Trood, a silver medal and Belle Vue Hall School

John Locksley Kemp, a descendant of Richard Kemp, gave a silver medal, passed down through the Kemp family, to the Powerhouse Museum in 1984. Very little was known about the medal’s history until Karen Eaton came across it by chance while viewing the Museum’s on-line collection database. Also a descendant o...

Book review: Jean Fornasiero & John West-Sooby, 'French Designs on Colonial New South Wales'

A lengthy title, but for a magnificently appointed book. It not only provides a translation of Péron’s memoir for the first time, but insightfully explores every relevant nook and cranny of colonial history of the period. The book is considerably enhanced by art works and contemporary maps, particularly thos...

Book review: Jenny Cullen, 'Sir Charles Lloyd Jones'

There are many fine artists who barely rate a mention in the history of Australian art, so it was gratifying to read a long overdue biography of Charles Lloyd Jones (1878–1958). Jones is best known today as the Managing Director of David Jones department store during its boom times in the first half of the la...

Book review: Kevin Power, 'John Campbell Pottery'

Produced from its premises in Launceston, Tasmania, Campbell’s pottery products were shipped to shops and agents in Tasmania, mainland Australia, New Zealand and as far as India and the USA. Examples can be found regularly at antique shops and auction rooms throughout Australia. The vast majority of pieces av...

The Australiana Society Canberra Centenary Members' Tour 2013

The Australiana Society Canberra Centenary Members’ Tour conducted from 5-8 September 2013 was extremely successful and thoroughly enjoyed by all who participated. It was superbly organised and led by committee member Lesley Garrett, assisted by Dr Paul Donnelly, another committee member.

A South Australian colonial wax relief by Josef David Herrgott (1823-61)

Gary Morgan’s research into this recently rediscovered colonial wax relief, reported here for the first time reveals it to be an important relic and memento of the early exploration of South Australia.

A colonial Grecian library table

An early colonial library table in the neo-classical style, with a maker’s label for Clarke of Castlereagh Street, Sydney, c. 1835, came to light in a distressed state a decade ago. Warwick Oakman ponders who might have made the table, where such an impressive piece of furniture might originally have been use...

Hilda Rix Nicholas: a cosmopolitan artist in 1920s Sydney

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...

Australiana Society Annual Reports 2013

Our first event after the last AGM was the show-stopping evening at the Mitchell Library to view the Macquarie collector’s chest, the Dixson collector’s chest and the Wallis album with Elizabeth Ellis and Richard Neville. This was one of the very best events that I can remember, with the unique opportunity ...

A ‘Grecian’ colonial chair'

We all relish finding an unrecognised treasure in an out-of-the-way place. John Watkins discusses a chair bought at a country auction, and suggests that, during its 185 years, it may have travelled all the way from Woolley’s workshop in Hobart to the little village of Wooli in northern NSW.

Australian cartography: a numismatic perspective

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...

A Venetian gondola on Farm Cove?

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...

Book review: Elizabeth Ellis, 'The Sydney Punchbowl'

Hordern House commissioned Elizabeth Ellis OAM, the Emeritus Mitchell Librarian, to research the background to the Chinese export porcelain punchbowl in the Mitchell Library showing scenes of the colony about 1814.

‘dear Emily’ in Western Australia

Former Prime Minister Julia Gillard, in her misogyny speech on 9 October 2012, was not the first to react to men allegedly putting down women’s activities. A century ago, English designer and artist C R Ashbee – his business damaged by low-priced competition from amateur women artists – condescendingly re...