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Recently rediscovered information pertaining to the life of Australian painter and art teacher Rose Blakemore has enriched our understanding of four portrait miniatures in the Queensland Art Gallery’s collection.
Colin Thomas, the inaugural chairman of the Tasmanian Chapter of the Australiana Society, has assembled a significant collection of scrimshaw, mostly of Tasmanian origin, which reflects Tasmania’s early prosperity as a result of maritime industries. In the first of these articles, Scott Carlin gives the background to whaling and scrimshaw in southern Australian waters.
You might easily pass by, without noticing, a basic item of furniture with little decoration or character, but a closer look can be revealing. Dr Philip Reid brings to life a small pine table, through a paper label pasted underneath, which reveals its maker, date, means of delivery and destination – the Hospital for the Insane at New Norfolk, near Hobart.
One of the first events organised by the Australiana Society’s Queensland Chapter was a visit to Miegunyah, the historic house museum owned and operated by the Queensland Women’s Historical Association in Bowen Hills, Brisbane for the past 50 years. For the visit in June 2018, local member Judith McKay acted as a guide, giving members a snapshot of the association and its extensive museum and archival collection; recently she undertook a significance assessment of the collection under the National Library’s Community Heritage Grant program.2 Here she tells the story of the association and its pioneering efforts to preserve Queensland’s heritage.
In 2002, Therese Mulford and Robyn Lake co-authored an article on the shadowy painter Frederick Strange (c 1807-1873),1 best known as a painter of landscapes and portraits in Tasmania.2 Some of his works were recently showcased in an exhibition, The Enigmatic Mr Strange, at the Queen Victoria Museum and Art Gallery;3 his 1859 view of Launceston is a typical detailed topographical study (plate 1). This sequel provides poignant new information about his life in Tasmania, which deepens the mystery as to his origins.
David Scott Mitchell (1836 –1907) had a private income which allowed him to pursue his collecting and become the greatest Australiana collector. About a century after British settlement, Mitchell identified the need to collect Australiana that was, at the time, rapidly disappearing. His collection of somewhere between 40,000 and 70,00 items, cluttering his house in Darlinghurst, ultimately formed the nucleus of the Mitchell Library in Sydney, opened in 1910. John Houstone likewise identified the need to collect and document – albeit on a less grand scale than Mitchell – the convict and free silversmiths who worked in early 19th century Australia.
Furniture restorer Paul Gregson follows up Dr David Bedford’s article on “hide glue” in Australiana for November 2018 with some practical advice, although he suggests that a demonstration is more informative to understand the process.
