Australiana, Vol 40 no 4, November 2018

At a heritage conference in Adelaide in 2015, Dr Donald Ellsmore attributed the superb interior decoration at Adelaide’s Ayers House and Gawler’s Para Para in South Australia to the Sydney decorating firm of Lyon, Cottier & Co. and their employee Charles Gow, purely on speculation. Till now, his opinion has gone unchallenged. By looking at the surviving artworks and researching contemporary journals, catalogues, directories and newspapers, Dr Andrew Montana refutes this attribution and restores William Joseph Williams and his workmen as the artists responsible. He shows that South Australia had its own pool of talented decorators and did not need to rely on importing skilled workmen from Sydney or Melbourne.

Thomas Wright (c.1827–1912) may not be a well-known name today, but in early Geelong his shop was a mainstay. As with many other silversmiths and jewellers, little of his work survives, so his name rarely comes up in publications. The recent discovery of a Thomas Wright silver trowel in the Geelong Grammar School archives changes this; school archivist Geoff Laurenson now provides a fuller record of Wright’s life and career.

Megan Martin researches the historical background of an 1833 convict love taken, a rare example made for a female convict, and reveals a sad tale of migration and family separation that resonates today.

In her postgraduate research into South Australian wood carvers centred on the Adelaide School of Design, Jodie Vandepeer came upon the strange story of Maud Golley (later known by her married name, Maud Baillie), a self-taught carver from remote Wedge Island, with no connection to the School. Her works exist only in private collections, yet a powerful mythology has built up around her, fuelled by a series of newspaper articles and biographies in recent publications regurgitating a few snippets – her isolated early life on Wedge Island, her self-taught carving ability, her perseverance under difficult conditions and her vice- regal patronage. Jodie explores Golley’s history and creations.

With Heart & Hand: art pottery in Queensland 1900–1950. Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane, 2018. Standard edition $125, limited edition (with designer print)

Christine Erratt, Ceremonial maces of Australian universities. Parker Press, Sydney 2018. 56 pages, 138 colour images, perfect bound 230 x 190 mm. ISBN 978 0 646 989235

John Hawkins has a particular interest in regional and ethnic diversity, as his articles on the influence of Scottish, Irish, European and American traditions on furniture and silver demonstrate. Here he looks at a group of Northern Italian-born craftsmen who established a mirror-making business in Melbourne in the 1850s.

Lieutenant James Cook RN, commanding officer of HMB Endeavour, the renamed collier Earl of Pembroke, sailed on 26 August 1768 from England on a naval and scientific voyage to observe the Transit of Venus, collect natural history specimens and explore the east coast of New Holland. The 250th anniversary of the voyage has reignited interest in Cook, with exhibitions and exploration once more of Newport Harbor for the remains of his ship, re-named Lord Sandwich and sunk to blockade the port in 1778 during the American War of Independence. Yvonne Barber looks at a Cook memento which deserves to be better known.