This simple tray made in the 1980s has the innocent look of a home craft project. But it was made by a prisoner at Maitland Gaol (in operation 1848-1998) where Australia’s most notorious and hardened criminals were locked away. Despite their crimes, many Maitland prisoners put their time inside to good use. To keep prisoners […]
This elaborately embroidered coat was once worn by Gustav (Gus) Friedrich Wagner (1881–1950) and is thought to have been made by his mother, Johanna Hermine (Mina) (1857–1921) in the nineteenth century German style. The coat is made from black cotton velvet with white embroidery and lace trim and bone false buttons. The side view of […]
In 1955 a journalist for the Newcastle Morning Herald and Miner’s Advocate reported that when touring the Morisset Psychiatric Hospital he observed a blind patient weaving a basket. At the Hospital in this time, and until 1965, items such as these baskets were made by patients in the Male Occupational Therapy Department. But there are also […]
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