Migration

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.

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.