Buy a PDF or print copy of Australiana for $40, including postage. Print issues are subject to availability. Issues older than 5 years are available to download for free.
Become a member of the
You will automatically become a subscriber to the Australiana journal, and receive four issues every year, as well as exclusive access to events and benefits.
In our May 2015 issue, Dianne Byrne identified a brooch presented in 1867 to Lady Bowen, wife of Queensland’s first Governor, in a photograph held in the National Library. Further detective work has revealed that the brooch is still held by Lady Bowen’s descendants in England. We illustrate it now for the first time.
Dorothy Erickson documents the life and work of Mattie Furphy (1878–1948), a Victorian who moved to Perth in 1902 to become a prominent Western Australian artist and designer.
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.
The National Gallery of Australia holds a three-piece silver buckle that originally formed the central element of a Champion’s Boxing Belt presented to prize-fighter Isaac Reid in 1847 (plate 1). This remarkable belt was made by Sydney silversmiths J.J. Cohen & Son1 and engraved by John Carmichael. Until recently significant details relating to the origins and history of the belt had remained obscure. What words were engraved on the main plate when it was first presented? Was there a complete description of the original belt? What became of it after the champion’s untimely death only months after his triumph? How did the belt come into the possession of boxer Larry Foley in 1886?
Dr Annette Gero’s article “Wartime quilts” in the May 2015 Australiana stimulated Peter Lane to contact her about an Anglo-Boer War keepsake. Trooper Ernest Worrall of South Australia had drawn images and words on this rather small scrap of khaki fabric in 1902. Mementoes of that war are rare and Dr Gero included it in her exhibition at the Manly Art Gallery and Museum. Here Peter reconstructs the sad life of Trooper Worrall.
Seldom do prisoner of war trench art objects indicate where they were made. One that does is carved from wood in the shape of continental Australia, with the words and date “Murchison den [the] 24.8.1941” together with a stylised Australian coat of arms.
During the second decade of the new millennium, many pioneers of the crafts movement in Australia, which began to flourish in the 1970s, will celebrate four decades of working in studio practices with their chosen materials.
Samuel Thomas Gill died melodramatically, aged 62, on the steps on the Melbourne Post Office at half past four on Wednesday 27 October 1880. A policeman recorded that he “was in a most filthy state and covered with vermin” while a search of the pockets found pills which identified him. An autopsy revealed that he had died of heart disease, and noted that he “was in the habit of drinking to excess”. No-one wrote an obituary. Professor Grishin believes that “STG” was neglected partly because of his perceived alcoholism, and here aims to rehabilitate the reputation of the artist whose output exceeds 2,700 recorded items.
