Book Review

Ken Orchard, James Ashton, Artist of the Fleurieu Coast. Royal South Australian Society ofArts, Adelaide 2025. Soft cover,95 pages 29 x 21 cm. Exhibitioncatalogue, all paintings and objectsillustrated, chronology, bibliography.$30, available only at the RSASA,Institute Building,North Terrace, Adelaide.

Book review byDr David Bedford of David J Mabberley, The Peter Crossing Collection, an illustrated catalogue, Peter Crossing AM, Sydney, 2022. $95 plus pack and post; Book Review by Meredith Hinchliffe AM of Christine Erratt Ceremonial maces ofAustralian parliaments,Parker Press, Sydney, NSW 2024.

BOOK REVIEW BY WARWICK OAKMAN
Mark R. Cabouret, Out From The Shadows
John Mitchell Cantle 1849 – 1919 Australia’s First Native Born Ornithological Draughtsman.
The Australiana Society Inc, Bondi Junction, NSW, 2023. Soft cover,
175 pages, 683 colour & sepia images, coloured end papers, 320 x 250 x 20 mm. ISBN 978-0-6457920-0-3. $100, available only from the Australiana Society.

BOOK REVIEW BY JOHN WADE
Dorothy Erickson, Inspired by Light & Land.
Designers and Makers in Western Australia 1970 to the 21st Century.
Western Australian Museum, Welshpool WA, 2023. Hard cover, 700 pages, hundreds of illustrations, chronology, bibliography, artists’ websites, index. ISBN 978 1 925040 46 3 $129.

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 in the British watercolour movement of the 1790s – c 1815, relocated to the Antipodes aged 64 in 1831 and found a new vision, provoked by the piercing Tasmanian light, the Tasmanian landscape and charismatic subject matter.

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 British outpost. This book offers a means of decoding their stories.

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 BEDFORD, Ashley Hay, Gum. The story of eucalypts and their champions; BOOK REVIEW BY JOHN WADE, Alexis Bergantz, French Connection. Australia’s cosmopolitan ambitions.

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 Jones,Illustrating the Antipodes: George French Angas in Australia & New Zealand 1844–45,
NLA Publishing & South Australian Museum 2021, $65

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

Vanessa Finney, Transformations: Harriet and Helena Scott, colonial Sydney’s finest natural history painters. New South Publishing, 2018, ISBN 9781742235806, 220 pages

With Heart & Hand: art pottery in Queensland 1900–1950. Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane, 2018. Standard edition $125, limited edition (with designer print)

Christine Erratt, Ceremonial maces of Australian universities. Parker Press, Sydney 2018. 56 pages, 138 colour images, perfect bound 230 x 190 mm. ISBN 978 0 646 989235

udith White, Culture Heist. Art versus Money, Brandl & Schlesinger, Sydney 2017. Paperback 246 pp

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,

If you think that a history of the numismatic collection held by the Art Gallery of South Australia would be a dry read of limited appeal, you are certainly in for a pleasant surprise with Peter Lane’s new book. It is a good read, full of life and interest.

... Tamie Fraser was one of the first to realise the same could be done here to reflect our own culture and history. In 1978, she encouraged the establishment of The Australiana Fund (not to be confused with the Australiana Society, established in the same year), with the aim of lending appropriate examples of Australian historical and contemporary artworks to the four official residences – Government House (Yarralumla) and The Lodge in Canberra, Kirribilli House and Admiralty House in Sydney.

The first study into our furniture history appears to be by John Earnshaw, a retired engineer. The name ‘W. Beatton’ stamped on an old cedar chiffonier aroused his curiosity. Earnshaw investigated further and produced a slim book, Early Sydney Cabinetmakers, in 1971 which resulted in devotees, students, historians, dealers and makers striving for more information. Over the years we have gone from newspaper reports, magazine articles, individual summaries and reference books to what attracts me in recent times: books that draw the reader to the real social, educational, creative and hard life of the cabinet maker. Denis Lake’s The Men who made the Celebrated Chairs (2016) is one, now joined by Robert La Nauze’s Made To Order – a superb book guaranteed to satisfy everyone interested in all aspects in our colonial furniture making.

The Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery in Launceston claims that Peddle chairs are “Tasmania’s best known antique”, so that probably justifies a book about them. And who better to compile it than Denis Lake, a Launceston furniture restorer, who can combine research with his detailed practical knowledge of furniture making. George Peddle (1855–1933), a Windsor chair maker originally from High Wycombe, 50 km west of London, arrived in Hobart in 1884, where he established a workshop at Austin’s Ferry before moving his operations to Launceston in 1888, then to Nabowla 35 km to the north-east in 1894. George’s brother-in-law Harry Hearn (1856–1932) joined him at Nabowla in 1895.

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.

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 that he had died of heart disease, and noted that he “was in the habit of drinking to excess”. No-one wrote an obituary. Professor Grishin believes that “STG” was neglected partly because of his perceived alcoholism, and here aims to rehabilitate the reputation of the artist whose output exceeds 2,700 recorded items.

The extended title for this splendid visual feast is a catalogue to accompany the exhibition Postcards from the Edge of the City at the Santos Museum of Economic Botany, 9 December 2014 to 26 April 2015. As a catalogue this book contains the front and back sides of 300 postcards published between 1900 and 1917.

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 significant contribution to the history of decorative arts and design in Australia.

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.

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 foundering of HMS Porpoise, wrecked on 17 August 1803 together with HMS Cato on the then unchartered Great Barrier Reef, when returning Matthew Flinders to London with his first batch of precious surveying charts.

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, sources and various other points to help the reader; it is both essential and illuminating to read the introduction, as well as amusing to see him struggle to try to set strict guidelines when the data, cantankerously, defies his definitions and conventions.

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 catalogue of Young’s known paintings together with their provenance where known, details of the collections in which they are held and where they were originally put up for sale – a useful addition as many of Young’s paintings, as the author notes, are undated.

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 last century. While his leadership of DJ’s is certainly of interest, it is his close involvement with the visual arts that deserves to be better known.

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 those by Charles-Alexandre Lesueur held in the Museum of Natural History, Le Havre. There are engravings by Francis Jukes and others of the time. The majority of art works are little known in the English-speaking world.

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 available today to collectors were produced during the 1920s to 1940s when there was a significant output of hand-thrown domestic and decorative pottery.

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.

In masterminding and producing this fine book, Tony Kanellos, Cultural Collections Manager and Curator of the Santos Museum of Economic Botany located in the Adelaide Botanic Garden, has provided both reader and book collector with a gem. It clearly demonstrates his care of and expertise in the safekeeping of the Heinrich Arnoldi collection of fruit and fungi models held by the SMEB (one of the three largest collections of them in the world) since their acquisition by Dr Richard Schomburgk, Director of the fledgling Adelaide Botanic Garden, shortly after taking up that post in 1866. With his own leading essay Tony Kanellos clearly demonstrates his knowledge and ability to write and write well.

As the daughter of a botanist, botanical artist and writer for whom species and genera have been named, and currently researching the women artists of Western Australia, I was really interested to review what looked to be a lovely book. The attractive layout designed by Kathryn Wright has numerous illustrations interspersed with a selection of photographs of von Mueller and the women.

The Neville Cayleys – father and son – are a curious case. Both were prolific, and are well represented in the market. The most recent iteration of the Australian Art Sales Digest (www. aasd.com.au) lists 605 works by Neville Henry Cayley and 572 works by Neville William Cayley sold at auction since the 1970s. This is more than artists like Conrad Martens or Tom Roberts. Market backing for the Cayleys is consistent, but not spirited. The highest price for Neville Henry, realised at auction in August 2013, is $23,600, while Neville William has reached $15,000.