Australiana, Vol 41 no 4, November 2019

Dianne Byrne shares some of the outcomes of her postgraduate research into 19th-century presentation jewellery and metalwork made in Queensland or for Queenslanders, focusing here on a series of racing trophies made in the 1880s for the Tattersall’s Club Cup run at Eagle Farm racecourse. Two of these were made by the previously neglected Sydney silversmith Thomas Matthew Alcock, and designed in an international ‘Etruscan’ style, which contrasts with the familiar vernacular style incorporating overtly Australian motifs such as emus and kangaroos.

Brothers Graham and William Ferry both trained as potters in Yorkshire, emigrated to Victoria and set up their own potteries in Melbourne’s Brunswick in the last two decades of the 19th century. Noted for their sculptural domestic wares and colourful majolica wares, here Greg Hill makes the case for recognising them as Australia’s first art potters.

David Bedford and Jennifer Stuerzl reflect on the pleasures of 40 years of collecting Australiana. Jennifer is a practising artist, painter, print and artist’s book maker and curates international print shows. David was trained as a botanist and became Director of the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens before transferring to the private sector and managing a family-owned business. Now retired, David and Jennifer work collaboratively for the Australiana Society in Queensland and on art-science collaborations, while David writes articles for Australiana as well as doing wood-turning and cabinet-making as a hobby.

Dr Gary Morgan’s research into a recently re-discovered Tasmanian miniature, reported here for the first time, identifies – partly by using new facial recognition technology – that it is a memento of a Tasmanian colonial family, as well as shedding new light on the technique of the artist, Ludwig Becker.

This is the tale of a table and desk, the first an historic table made by a master craftsman who as an apprentice is reputed to have made one of Queen Victoria’s wedding presents as well as a chair presented to the Queen of Spain. This man made our table in Western Australia from native jarrah for a well-known Western Australian pioneer, John “Handsome Jack” Molloy, once rumoured to have been the illegitimate son of one of Queen Victoria’s “wicked uncles”. The second is a desk, also of jarrah, made for Molloy’s daughter a few years later. The pair provide an interesting slice of Western Australian colonial history.

Vanessa Finney, Transformations: Harriet and Helena Scott, colonial Sydney’s finest natural history painters. New South Publishing, 2018, ISBN 9781742235806, 220 pages

As you all know we are in our 40th year and will finish our celebrations with a three-day symposium on 18–21 October 2019 at the State Library of NSW. This is going to be a very big and significant event. We have more than 25 confirmed speakers and very many different areas of Australiana will be covered in the presentations. Stephen Bowers, the well-known contemporary ceramicist and ex-director of the Jam Factory in Adelaide, will be one of three keynote speakers, along with John Hawkins and Julian Bickersteth. Richard Neville, Mitchell Librarian and Director of Education and Scholarship, will be talking about how the NSW Library collection was put together and will showcase treasures from the collection.