The laptop of its day, this portable writing desk allowed the writer freedom to move around. Perfect for use next to an open fire or beneath a shady tree in one’s garden, its lower compartments tidily held ink, paper and pens. This late nineteenth-century example belonged to Alexander (1837-1915) and Ann Hanlon (nee Boyd) (1839-1929). […]
What was thirteen-year-old Irish girl Ann Boyd thinking about as she stood on the deck of the emigrant ship Australia on 8 June 1853, as it sailed into Sydney Harbour and approached Dawes Point to lower its anchor? Accompanied by her parents Mary and Adam, and her eight siblings, Mary might have been impressed by […]
In the 1870s, when Berry schoolgirl Helena Kinneally stitched the buttonholes, fancy borders and darning to create this needlework sampler, she probably didn’t know how useful those skills would later be, when she became the mother of ten children. Helena Kinneally (c. 1868-1904) was born in Victoria about 1868. She was the daughter of William […]
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