Australiana, Vol 37 no 4, November 2015

Edinburgh-born John Carmichael arrived in Sydney in 1825, living and working there for over 30 years producing landscapes, portraits, maps, billheads, musical scores, illustrations and some of Australia’s first postage stamps. His works provide a revealing and valuable record of life and times in colonial Sydney. Until now, the published details of Carmichael’s life have been fragmentary. Confusion surrounds his name, his age and education, whether he came free or as a convict, if he was deaf, how many times he married, the number of his children and the distressing circumstances of the last months of his life. This new account of Carmichael’s life illustrates a few of his many works, which can be found in the National Gallery of Australia, National Library of Australia, State Library of NSW, State Library of Victoria, the National Library of New Zealand and private collections. In 2011, the British Library reproduced Select views of Sydney, New South Wales. Drawn and engraved by John Carmichael.1

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.

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.