Australiana, Vol 44 no 4, November 2022

Thank you to the members who attended the 2022 Annual General Meeting in person or via zoom. Thank you also for the show of support to me as President and to the other Directors who were elected. I particularly thank Peter Crawshaw for his nomination and subsequent election to the Secretary’s position. Lynda Summers had previously filled this role, as well as that of Treasurer, which was a totally unrealistic expectation of her. Lynda, as she always does, just got on with the job. Thank you, Lynda, for your contribution to the Society during the transition from the former Committee to the new national Board in both the Secretary’s and the Treasurer’s role which you retain. Your level of commitment to the Society and support to me as President has been absolutely outstanding! Thanks also to Robert Hannan and Peter Crawshaw for making the wonderful Rothwell Lodge available for the meeting.

William Knox D’Arcy (1849–1917) is remembered today as an indefatigable adventurer, who through financial daring and extraordinary good fortune, became the ‘founder’ of the modern oil industry in the Middle East. However, there is another facet to his life, as the ex-Rockhampton solicitor who became an aspiring and influential art patron who applied his wealth derived from the wildly profitable Mt Morgan gold mine to commission unique furnishings and a suite of famous William Morris tapestries, and to assemble an eclectic collection of contemporary 19th-century British paintings. Dianne Byrne looks at Knox D’Arcy as one of Australia’s major early connoisseurs and collectors and considers his now forgotten contribution to the fledgling collection of the Queensland Art Gallery.

November 2022 marks the centenary of the discovery of the virtually intact tomb of King Tutankhamun, who reigned from about 1332 to 1323 BC. The pharaoh’s burial goods created a worldwide sensation focussed on ancient Egypt, which has long fascinated Europeans, partly because of its Biblical connections and partly for its outstanding and distinctive civilisation. Interest has accelerated periodically, first with Napoleon’s expedition in 1798, then the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869, battles against the Ottoman Empire during World War I, and the 1922 discovery of Tutankhamun’s tomb. John Hawkins links the second phase, around the opening of the Suez Canal, with a resurgence of interest in ancient and modern Egypt, and its manifestation in a gold sphinx brooch from the workshop of Henry Steiner, a prominent Adelaide jeweller.

From the foundation of the colonies, local cabinetmakers experimented with using the wide range of native timbers. Bob Fredman discusses a chest of drawers, most likely made about 1900 in Bundaberg, Queensland and probably by a local cabinet maker of Germanic heritage, who liked to use contrasting timbers with unusual figure patterns.

Many colonial woodworkers, often trained in Britain or Europe, came to Australia and discovered the vast variety of native timbers suitable for carving or for making furniture and timber articles. Jewellery ‘book boxes’ made from several contrasting North Queensland timbers and bearing the stamp of ‘H.A. Nielsen’ are quite similar in design and timbers, but simpler and more restrained, to those made by Thomas Griffiths, previously highlighted in August Australiana.

Prodigious Australiana contributor Glenn R. Cooke is well known through his professional interests in Queensland art, decorative arts and social history. But that does not define Glenn; he loves ballroom dancing and gardens, as well as pursuing a sideline in collecting artefacts relating to his home state. This includes 1540 souvenir textiles which have been acquired by the State Library of Queensland. Its current exhibition presents 214 printed tea towels to show how the Sunshine State has been presented in popular imagery over the last 70 years.

We sometimes forget that some artefacts are ephemeral. Paul Gregson reminds us that a biscuit can be a nostalgic piece of Australiana, though it may only exist now in images.

Artists draw inspiration from many sources. Glenn Cooke examines at how a 20th-century Queensland wood carver took his design inspiration from an historical French pottery plaque some 400 years old, finding what seems to be the exact example he used.

Polished-brass and chrome-plated aeroplanes were popular World War II mementoes – but how were they made and why did they take off in Australia?

Brisbane painter and art teacher Mary E. Jones has escaped recognition for 130 years. She would not be alone in that fate: over time, many aspiring painters and their works disappear from history. Timothy Roberts reveals some details about Miss Jones’s career and her impact as a woman artist in Brisbane between 1887 and 1891, as well as her major career achievement – organising the first exhibition of works by women artists in Queensland.