Most collectors of anything have a small table or two, useful to hold your tea, coffee or wine within reach while you relax in an old-fashioned easy chair. Avid collector Bob Fredman takes us through the several different styles made in Australia over a hundred years, and highlights the importance of the technical innovations and changes in materials in the 1930s.
William Petsalis and James Bateman’s A Survey of the Bateman Collection is a most welcome survey of more than 200 pieces from one of the most impressive collections of Australian colonial furniture and folk art ever assembled, the successor to the dispersed collections of Lord McAlpine and the late Caroline Simpson. Certain pieces will be known to members from their publication in Australiana and in Fahy & Simpson’s Australian Furniture Pictorial History and Dictionary 1788–1938 (1998).
Acanthus leaves have been used as decoration in buildings, furniture and pottery since the birth of western architecture. They were often a decorative feature on Australia’s early Neo-Classical furniture until the advent of Australian themes towards the end of the 19th century. Bob Fredman discusses the use of acanthus motifs by Australian artisans and concludes with some information about an interesting piece of pottery.
Scottish-born immigrant cabinetmaker John Wilson Carey (1829–1902) made two exceptional items of Queensland cabinetwork in the 1870s which still exist today. His skilful use of many different Queensland timber veneers makes them cabinetmaking tours de force. Dr David Bedford explores what they reveal of the use of cabinet timbers in Queensland and his parquetry veneering designs. He explores the challenges in translating the common names used for timbers in the 1870s to the current common and botanical names of those timbers.
While David Bedford has analysed two extant examples of veneered Queensland desks made by J W Carey, Yvonne Barber provides biographical information about this man devoted to the Queensland timber industry, who remarked that ‘taking a man like him from his business was like taking a rudder out of a ship.’ After starting out ‘on the tools’ as a cabinetmaker in the 1860s and 1870s – for which he will be best remembered – Carey moved on to become a saw-mill proprietor, a contractor constructing prefabricated buildings and an inventor.
We encourage lively, informed discussion about items of Australiana. Contributions to this magazine usually give the author’ s email address, so readers can initiate contact and give feedback. As a result of readers’ correspondence and questions, Bob Fredman has now modified some of the information he presented, and the conclusions he reached, about an early chest of drawers that featured in our issue of February 2024.
Bob Fredman brings some country humour to discussing the design inspiration of a chair discovered in Brisbane, made of Queensland timbers, which also displays Egyptian design elements. He suggest it was probably made in Queensland and inspired by the finding of Tutankhamun’s tomb at Luxor in 1922.
An exploration into the construction and history of an early, distinctively veneered chest of drawers from Tasmania reveals that it has a twin. E.J. Bateman presents the evidence of the two chests' provenance, noting the 'broad arrow' Government inventory marks, and suggests that they were made by convict cabinet makers in the Hobart Lumber Yard, for the use of Lt Governor Arthur in his private apartments in Government House, about 1828.
Chests of drawers come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, and are easy to describe using some basic elements such as dimensions and number of drawers, types of timber, feet, knobs etc. For scholars of early furniture many more parameters come into play, not the least being an assessment of whether all its features are original and whether there have been later ‘improvements’. To describe a piece of furniture properly requires knowledge that only a systematic investigation involving visual and forensic procedures, coupled with appropriate research, can provide. The physical evidence within the cabinetmaking can reveal many secrets. Bob Fredman takes us through the step-by-step process of his analysis and shows how a closer look can reveal its origin and history.
Recycling ain’t what it used to be. Launceston clock and watch experts Graham and Sallie Mulligan came across a tapestry footstool which their sharp eyes recognised as comprising re-used parts of an old clock. Further investigation revealed that the parts came from a significant wall clock which had been retailed in Launceston by clockmaker James Barclay between his arrival in 1834 and his death in 1845.
Bob Fredman highlights an interesting discovery, English cabinetmakers using Australian rose mahogany as an exotic furniture timber in the early 19th-century. He suggests that, in the dearth of mentions of rose mahogany in early Australian furniture, there may be a major void in our knowledge and in our collections, and that this timber may have not been identified.
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 landowner could relax and survey his (and occasionally her) land and animals, hence the name.
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 arks’ provenance, curator Dr Jana Vytrhlik came up with an ingenious argument to tackle the question. Looking at the emerging theatre scene in Sydney in the 1830s, she makes the case for Barnet Aaron Phillips – theatre stage ‘machinist’, cabinet maker and member of the Synagogue Committee – as the probable designer and maker.
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 Lenehan, to their young Queen. The gifts arrived soon after the close of Prince Albert’s enormously successful ‘Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of All Nations.’ Queen Victoria accepted the gifts which found their way to Osborne, the Queen’s summer house on the Isle of Wight. There they languished, the gold vanished, and their significance in the discovery of gold in Australia was apparently forgotten – until now.
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 Australian furniture, apart for some well-known examples from the collection of the late Trevor Kennedy. John Wade looked into the history of Australian billiard tables, and specifically the history of this much-exhibited and much- travelled billiard table and its makers, to put it into a broader context.
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 the surviving work of Juan (John) Casellas at New Norcia, which has since developed into a monastic retreat and tourist attraction.
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, to provide a context. The Ipswich folk-carver Peter Harley (c 1873-1941), however, produced distinctive work over a significant period and his profile began to emerge from obscurity after Glenn Cooke presented his ‘Merry Christmas‘ box to the Ipswich Art Gallery in 2005.
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 unusual figure patterns.
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. Nielsen’ are quite similar in design and timbers, but simpler and more restrained, to those made by Thomas Griffiths, previously highlighted in August Australiana.
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 Wyandra to supply wooden sleepers to lay the tracks from Charleville to Cunnamulla, then became a contractor, and in 1899 built a new sawmill in Cairns. He overcame insolvency in 1909 when Cairns Timber Limited acquired the premises, machinery, plant and other assets of his sawmill.1 Thomas and his sons remained associated with the mill; when he and his wife left Cairns in 1912 for a ten-month, round-the-world trip, 80 sawmill employees presented the couple with a purse of sovereigns and an address. 2
Retiring in his mid-60s, about 1920 he embraced woodwork as a hobby, exploiting Queensland’s forest resources. He crafted a wide variety of inlaid articles in various decorative Queensland native timbers, first in Brisbane from about 1920 to 1927, then in the tourist village of North Tamborine, from 1927 until his death in 1943 at the age of 84. Book boxes, used for holding playing cards
or as jewel boxes, were his speciality and he probably made hundreds. Examples of these were presented to King George V and Queen Mary after being exhibited in 1925 at the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley.
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 Wyandra to supply wooden sleepers to lay the tracks from Charleville to Cunnamulla, then became a contractor, and in 1899 built a new sawmill in Cairns. He overcame insolvency in 1909 when Cairns Timber Limited acquired the premises, machinery, plant and other assets of his sawmill. Thomas and his sons remained associated with the mill; when he and his wife left Cairns in 1912 for a ten-month, round-the-world trip, 80 sawmill employees presented the couple with a purse of sovereigns and an address.
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 that he began making furniture and ornamental wooden carvings after the death of his first wife, Annie, in 1893. This box carries several examples of his carving and, in terms of Australiana, is as good as it gets.
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.
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 as their timber of choice, in any case were branching in a different direction to furniture makers from the eastern states. Little of the local furniture was marked, but idiosyncratic Spanish techniques and church or family provenance helps in attributing some pieces to these colonists. Dr Dorothy Erickson delves into the history of one of them, Isidro Oriol.
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 Exhibition of 1880 were illustrated in some of the contemporary newspapers, while half a dozen examples have been acquired by Melbourne museums, so their forms are already broadly familiar. Dr Andrew Montana discovered an 1880s photograph which shows a cabinet, originally from the 1880 Melbourne Exhibition, in a real domestic interior. He discusses this cabinet as well as other surviving examples of W.H. Rocke’s exhibition furniture.
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 on the richly coloured mahoganies, but the discovery of multi-coloured timbers that incorporate stable colour variations sparked a new fashion for ornate inlays, marquetry, and parquetry.
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 novelty forms of boards existed and had become collectable.
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 Ltd of Cheltenham SA from c 1947–1954 or later. So when a board appeared at auction in May 2021 bearing a paper label with the maker’s name, ‘Allan Duckworth’, it spurred the authors to uncover his background. Newspapers, local historians and family sources have revealed a mass of information and a selection of his works. American-born Allen Duckworth (1863–1940) was a staunch advocate of using Australian native timbers, particularly those from Beech Forest in Victoria, for furniture and ornamental woodwork.
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 October 1839 the partnership was dissolved, Whitesides withdrawing to operate on his own in Argyle Street. By 1842, he had moved to premises in Liverpool Street,4 where, by the mid-1840s, he was producing top quality pieces of furniture branded under his name (plate 1). The earliest such piece known is c 1845.
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 ship, Wilhelmsburg, did ‘sail up the Derwent’ in 1855, arriving at Hobart on 26 August with 476 German immigrants bound for Hobart and Sydney. Wilhelm Kirchner, the Prussian Consul in Sydney, was prominent in promoting German immigration to the Australian colonies, particularly Queensland. In May 1854, Kirchner purchased 500 blank bounty tickets from John Loch to bring emigrants from Hamburg to Tasmania. The Hobart firm of Stern, Baar & Franc also claimed to be able...
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 characteristics are very similar for both genera, except for one species, C. cristata, noted below.
British and Irish emigrant craftsmen working in early colonial New South Wales and Tasmania brought with them the Classical Revival style, with its sweeping curves and carved decoration. This elegant furniture, mostly in cedar, and inspired by the re-discovery of ancient civilisations, has many admirers. Bob Fredman discusses how he re-covered a Tasmanian Classical Revival cedar sofa, and some of the difficult decisions he had to make in the process.
German settlers in South Australia, notably in the Barossa and to a lesser extent in other parts of Australia, introduced a furniture style based on the rural carpentry traditions of their native lands, rather than the more common styles seen in Australia derived from British cabinetmaking. David Bedford and Richard Phillips review the common use of the term ‘Biedermeier’ to describe this style, and publish some examples attributed to the furniture workshop of the idiosyncratic cabinetmaker Carl Ewald ‘Gluepot’ Graetz (1865–1937) of Keyneton, South Australia.
David Bedford has researched the life and work of Tasmanian cabinetmaker Richard Dowling (c 1820/1822–1867), little documented till now. He presents new discoveries about Dowling’s life and suggests why Dowling’s story has been so elusive. Evidence has emerged, and examples of his work found, which show that Dowling, previously known only for parquetry writing slopes bearing his label, also made furniture. Dr Bedford provides technical descriptions of Dowling’s workmanship and identifies most of the timbers that Dowling used. By examining labelled examples, he identifies the characteristics of Dowling’s style, showing how these stylistic characteristics can be used to assess if unlabelled pieces can be credibly attributed to Dowling or not.
This is the tale of a table and desk, the first an historic table made by a master craftsman who as an apprentice is reputed to have made one of Queen Victoria’s wedding presents as well as a chair presented to the Queen of Spain. This man made our table in Western Australia from native jarrah for a well-known Western Australian pioneer, John “Handsome Jack” Molloy, once rumoured to have been the illegitimate son of one of Queen Victoria’s “wicked uncles”. The second is a desk, also of jarrah, made for Molloy’s daughter a few years later. The pair provide an interesting slice of Western Australian colonial history.
The November 2018 issue featured the carved furniture of a young woman, Alice Maud Golley (1884–1961) who lived an isolated life with her immediate family on remote Wedge Island in the Spencer Gulf of South Australia. Golley’s furniture is a virtuoso display of skill and grace, yet she was untrained. Among the objects that came to light during her research before publication, Jodie was unable to locate Father Kelly’s chair; tantalisingly, only a black and white photo existed. Then, without any knowledge of the article, the owner serendipitously contacted the Port Lincoln History Group and they were magically in touch within minutes. This magnificent chair turned out to be just 20 km from Jodie’s home in the Clare Valley and had a strong Clare Valley connection to boot.
Three South Australian researchers explore the possible genesis and history of a massive red gum bookcase which came up at an Adelaide auction in 2017. Using a variety of evidence, sources and methods, they identify the bookcase as a very early piece of South Australian furniture and mount a case for who commissioned it, who designed it and who made it, when and why.
You might easily pass by, without noticing, a basic item of furniture with little decoration or character, but a closer look can be revealing. Dr Philip Reid brings to life a small pine table, through a paper label pasted underneath, which reveals its maker, date, means of delivery and destination – the Hospital for the Insane at New Norfolk, near Hobart.
Furniture restorer Paul Gregson follows up Dr David Bedford’s article on “hide glue” in Australiana for November 2018 with some practical advice, although he suggests that a demonstration is more informative to understand the process.
David Bedford cautions against using modern glues for antique furniture restoration, recommending instead that you stick with old-fashioned animal glues.
The design and manufacture of a writing desk for the Bank of New Zealand, Dunedin (1879–83). We are familiar with immigrants trained in Britain or Europe coming to Australia and continuing their craft, or with Australian artists travelling to Europe to learn and expand their skills and ideas. Rarely have we looked at exchanges and collaboration across the Tasman. Dr La Nauze outlines the interchange among bank architects and the building and furnishing trades by exploring who designed and made an extraordinary Australian cedar writing desk for a New Zealand bank.
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.
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 star item of furniture in the late Caressa Crouch and Carl Gonsalves collection was a cedar sideboard, of very early date, made about 1815–20. The sideboard, which they loved and had left virtually untouched, summed up all that was exceptional in Caressa and Carl’s collection, which focused on Tasmaniana.1 The sideboard has been known to collectors since the late 1980s, and featured in Fahy & Simpson’s Australian Furniture: Pictorial History and Dictionary.2 A prominent Tasmanian collector bought the sideboard at the 2015 auction and returned it to Hobart. The new owner commissioned this article for Australiana, which traces its provenance back to Hobart and speculates about its original location and maker. We hope that readers may add to this research.
By examining the innovations in the various editions of the London and Edinburgh cabinet-makers’ books of prices, as well as identifying the decorative details favoured by Irish cabinet-makers, John Hawkins suggests that it is possible to develop a chronology for the important group of early Sydney furniture attributed to the Irish convict cabinet-maker Lawrence Butler.
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.
Trove and family histories have recently revealed information about Edwin Foss Duffield (1846–1922), a colonial-born craftsman of distinction in Western Australia. He commenced working in Fremantle in the late 1860s as a cabinet maker and undertaker, and a number of pieces of furniture from his workshop survive.
Since opening an art gallery last year that includes a display of early cedar furniture, Bob Fredman has been fascinated to see that the furniture strikes a strong chord with nearly all visitors. They unfailingly comment on it being beautiful, and especially take an interest when they find out it is all Australian. Keen to understand more of this phenomenon, here he attempts to provide an explanation. Hence it is not so much an exciting research paper as it is a compendium of facts, observations and thoughts.
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 for supplying bookcases to Sir Redmond Barry. Cabinet makers worked with other trades as necessary. George Thwaites & Sons collaborated with the wood carver and ornamental metal maker Daniel Livingstone during the 1860s. Together they produced some of Australia’s great Gothic Revival furniture and a series of unusual hall chairs.
Museums tend to lift items out of the ordinary world into the refined orbit of curators. In detailing the history of a collection of Krimper furniture bought by a Sydney family, Catriona Quinn shows the importance of knowing the history of an object, its owners and context – its provenance – and argues that its social, physical, economic and historical relationships are a crucial part of understanding its significance.
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 history of Victoria’s chair of state made c 1859, outlining the role Flint Ramsay & Co played in its genesis, and the ambiguous symbolism of the Southern Cross.
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 details of the businesses run in Ireland by two of the cabinet-makers covered in the book. The first is James Templeton, to whom Andrew Lenehan was apprenticed both in Ireland and in Sydney. It was already known that he ran a business in Dublin, but the details were uncertain. Kevin Fahy, Christina Simpson and Andrew Simpson suggested in Nineteenth Century Australian Furniture that he might be the man by that name who was in business at 6 Henry-street, Dublin, in 1835.
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 Henry Passmore were made more rewarding with the collaboration of interested family members, who had already undertaken some research or knew where works existed in the family. the research and connections of Joseph Hamblin’s descendant Jill Roy have been crucial to documenting his life and work in England, Perth and Victoria.
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.
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 used, and speculates how it may have come into the hands of its previous owners, a family of solicitors.
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.
In his new book Convict and Free: The Master Furniture-makers of Early New South Wales, David Kelly presents well-researched biographies of dozens of previously little-known cabinetmakers. Tasmanian and NSW cabinet-maker, undertaker and upholsterer Joseph Baronet Bridekirk is just one of them. His story is documented in the book, and abridged here for reasons of space.
The construction of the complex and difficult-to-make oval cedar case for the Woodstock Challenge Cup (plate 1) illustrated in my article “Essie Jenyns and her Australian Terriers” has prompted me to wonder how and why it came into being. Recently I purchased for my reference library a complete set of the Bulletin of the Society of Ornamental Turners (SOT).2 In Bulletin vol 25, no 125, September 2011, there is an article on surviving Birch twin-mandrel lathes, giving as an example the Wood family and its Birch lathe.
