When twice-transported English convict Mary ‘Molly’ Morgan (1760-1835) stepped off the ship to serve a colonial sentence at Newcastle in 1814, little did she know that about 170 years later she would become the central character of a musical stage play. What would she have thought of the band’s electric guitars, saxophone and drumkit (not […]
This elegant Taiwanese screen is both functional and beautiful. But loaded with symbolism, its greatest purpose is its meaning. The plum blossom branch depicted in the central panel, with its delicate buds and flowers that only appear in winter, represents strength and endurance; the two birds perched together seem to symbolise a friendship or partnership. […]
Like most pieces of iron machinery made in the nineteenth century, this ‘Ewbank Jewel’ laundry mangle was built to last. And last it did, now as solid and sturdy as the day it left the Entwhistle & Kenyon factory in Lancashire, England, sometime after 1875. Mangles were used to quickly flatten sheets, towels and tablecloths, […]
How many pieces of wood does it take to build a miniature bridge? How many hours, and how much patience? With its clever system of interconnected triangles and cast-iron joints, this 1:25 exact scale model of one of the three spans of the Morpeth bridge was expertly and painstakingly pieced together by Michael Deguara. A […]
A grand house deserves fancy furniture. Perhaps that’s why James Martin Hillhouse Taylor (c1814-1875) purchased this elaborate dining chair and ‘grandmother’ chair in about 1849 – to furnish his new residence in Morpeth. As a shipping agent for the Hunter Valley Steam Navigation Company, with a profitable side business selling spirits and other goods, Taylor […]
When Max Watters (1934-2020) was drawn to the simple beauty of this setting, the cows that once grazed the grassy paddocks at the Merton dairy, near Denman in the Upper Hunter Valley, were long-gone. Max was a lifelong resident of Muswellbrook, a twenty-minute drive from Denman. He lived his entire life in a modest timber […]
On an unknown day in 1976 Max Watters (1936-2020), an established Hunter Valley landscape artist, headed north from his home in Muswellbrook in search of inspiration. After taking the Glenbawn Road, east of the small town of Aberdeen, Max crossed the Hunter River (Coquun). He navigated the wind in the road that bends around undulating […]
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