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.