Australiana, Vol 36 no 4, November 2014

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 information builds on the pioneering work and sources referred to in Anne Schofield & Kevin Fahy’s Australian Jewellery 19th and Early 20th Century, and in Kenneth Cavill, Graham Cocks & Jack Grace’s Australian Jewellers Gold & Silversmiths Makers & Marks.

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, to be distributed to members with the February 2015 issue.

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 trained in the gentle arts of watercolour and embroidery. Unlike some other unmarried gentlewomen she had no need to become a governess to pass on the skills she would have learnt from her own governess. This is the story of a work of hers now in Government House in Western Australia.

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 watchmaker John Arnold, subsequently modified, can be identified as the time keeper Arnold no 5 commissioned by Joseph Banks to be taken on Cook’s second voyage in 1772, and that this is the world’s first pocket chronometer.

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 visits to appreciate the depth and breadth of the project, and further visits to absorb all that is on display and appreciate the global stories being told.