Hidden treasures and stories from our collection
Collection of the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney. 86/741. Gift of the State Rail Authority Archives, 1986.
Would you have guessed the mystery rail object on display in the Museum’s marquee at Steamfest this year? Visitors to this event held in Maitland, NSW, over the weekend of 28/29th April were encouraged to have a go.
Dolls house "Charlaine", 1946. Gift of Elaine Molloy, 2009. Powerhouse Museum Collection, 2009/32/1.
What do ANZAC Day, The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper and this dolls house in the Museum’s collection have in common? The answer is a heartfelt story which began when Charlie Sellers, who worked as a linotype foreman in the compositing section of the Herald, promised to build his youngest daughter, Elaine, a dolls house.
Continue reading ‘ANZAC Day, The Sydney Morning Herald and a Dolls House’
Lores Bonney and her aircraft, My Little Ship, at Archerfield Aerodrome in 1932 before her round-Australia flight. Collection: Powerhouse Museum.
In celebration of International Women’s Day for 2012 I’d like to highlight the amazing short but inspiring aviation career of Maude (Lores) Bonney (1897-1994), one of Australia’s pioneers. Lores’ passion for flying began after a flight in 1928 with aviation legend, Bert Hinkler, her husband’s cousin. In 1930 she began flying lessons in secret while her husband, Harry Bonney, played golf. When Lores confessed her aviation pursuits, he helped her buy a DH60 Gipsy Moth aircraft which she called affectionately “My Little Ship”. Being a leather manufacturer he had two full-length suede flying suits made for her.
Continue reading ‘Celebrating the Australian Aviatrix Lores Bonney’
Florence Breaden's school exercise book. Collection: Powerhouse Museum, 2010/65/1. Gift of Rowley Gilliland, 2010
This time of year Mums and Dads are busy buying all the exercise books, pencil cases, folders and laptops for the beginning of the school year. School has certainly changed in 100 years or so. A little while ago I acquired a gorgeous school exercise book owned by Florence Breaden (1893-1929) in 1908 who attended Petersham School in an inner Sydney suburb. I think it’s a homework book because it covers a range of subjects including Arithmetic, English, Geography, Poetry and Music, and was used from February to the end of the school year. As a diligent 15-year-old, Florence carefully illustrated her book with the most beautiful pen and ink title pages, half title pages and borders, all illustrated with flowers, rabbits, foxes, chickens, swans, birds and a woman riding a horse side saddle.
Continue reading ‘Back to school, Florence’s 1908 exercise book’
2011/32/1 Status fibre school case made by Consolidated Plastics Industries Pty Ltd, Sydney. Gift of Nicky Balmer, 2011. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
All over Australia thousands of new backpacks are being slung over shoulders as students begin or go back to school. Backpacks were used from about the mid-1980s as health professionals worried about the damage to children’s spines caused by heavy school cases. These were made of composite fibre, or if you were really lucky you had a tough Globite one made of vulcanised fibre. The Globite school case is such an iconic symbol yellow ones served as goody bags for the audience attending the opening ceremony of the Sydney 2000 Olympics.
Last year I acquired a school case, not a Globite, we’ve got a couple of those already. You must be thinking there are thousands of old school bags tucked away in cupboards and garages storing mementos. I know some-one who still has his tiny cardboard Kindergarten school case from 60 years ago. He keeps bits and pieces of electric fittings in it. But Nicky’s school case, the one I acquired, is special. It’s empty now but contains a wealth of stories and shared memories triggered by its Dymo name tape label, treasured stickers and childish handwriting on the inside name label. The bag evokes such a strong feeling of school you can almost smell the remains of an old banana. It provides a wonderful snapshot of attending primary school in Sydney in the 1970s added to by contemporary photos provided by Nicky and the memories she has written of her primary school days-
“This suitcase is the first case I owned as I had a larger one when I left Infants School and moved to Primary School. I would have owned the larger one until I changed schools in third class, in the last term, and went to Queenwood. Everyone at Queenwood took a grey vinyl bag with a red Q on the side.
This suitcase has a Norco sticker on the outside which I think was given away as a dairy promotion. In infants school we still received free milk at morning tea so it might have been associated with that but I can’t remember. I still remember the little glass milk bottles with the foil lids. They were stored in trays in a concrete box/shelf at the entrance to the school. I can still remember how it tasted when it went off in the sun.
Inside the interior of the case, the smiley face stickers are cut out from left over sticky backed plastic that my Mum used to line the drawers of my new desk which Dad made about that time. The stickers of the little girl and Santa were from a packet Mum had purchased as Christmas gift tags. I thought they were very special and hoarded them for a long time before I could bring myself to use them.
I don’t really remember what I used to carry in the case. I don’t remember having homework or having to bring my own pencils. I know I took cotton hankies with cartoon pictures on them because I can remember the horror when one dropped out of my uniform and went down the toilet.
Initially, I would have had a toothbrush too as Dad forced me to take one in Kindy to brush my teeth with at lunch time. I don’t think that lasted long, so then for the rest of my school life I would be forced on the way to school to eat either a carrot or a piece of celery.
The case must have carried my lunch, but the only thing I can remember at that age is sitting on the bench to each lunch under the trees, unwrapping a vegemite sandwich and realising I was fed up with always having them. Mum always used white bread and cut them into three fingers, cutting off the side crust but leaving the top. I also think they were wrapped in miles of glad wrap. I don’t think I owned a lunch box.
At some stage in primary school, I can also remember Mum using a white plastic sandwich bag printed with pictures of cartoon animals or monsters on the side, and as it was the days before zip lock they had a little turn over at the top. I had to make sure I brought them home again so Mum could keep re-using them.
I don’t think I bought lunch from the tuck shop very often. I remember the first time I did, I ordered a meat pie and sauce and a finger bun with pink icing. It was a scary experience as at four and a half I didn’t have the skills to eat tidily and remember being covered in food and crying.
I vividly remember drinking from the bubblers at school but I can also remember occasionally having cordial in a round plastic drink bottle with a little cup lid.
In third class I can remember the mortification of pureed apple leaking all over the interior of the suitcase.
I probably carried a grey school jumper and possibly my yellow plastic raincoat. There would not have been a hat as I never wore a hat to school for sun protection.
I certainly carried toys to school in the case too and I remember a time when I played a lot in the girl’s toilets and pushed paper boats around the floors. The boats were made from folded newspaper.
Nicky with her Mum off to school in 1971. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
To get to school it was a 10 minute walk which I did with my Mother or sometimes I was picked up by my friend’s father Mr Bower, and Rebecca and I would go to school together. By high school the smell of my morning celery in the car was enough to turn Rebecca off celery for life.
At some stage after I stopped using the case I turned it into a closet to hang my Barbie doll clothes. Dad made loops to hold the hangers and glued them to the top of the case inside. The Barbies stayed in the case until last week (2007) when I gave them to my daughter.”
Australian-made sledge used on the 1911-14 Mawson Expedition, Powerhouse Museum Collection, H8143, Gift of Australian Museum, 1967.
What do Douglas Mawson, aviation pioneer Lawrence Hargrave, a Sydney car body builder and the Klondike gold rush have in common? They are all part of the riddle of the Museum’s sledges.
In my last post I wrote about the Norwegian sledge in the Museum’s collection used on Mawson’s 1911-14 Australian Antarctic Expedition. According to Mawson’s “The Home of the Blizzard” he not only took 20 Norwegian-made sledges but 17 sledges made in Sydney. The Museum has 3 sledges used on this expedition, one has a manufacturer’s plate indicating it was made by L. Hargan of Norway but the other two are quite different in appearance.
During my research on the sledges I found the documentary evidence on the Australian-made sledges was patchy and inconclusive. Perhaps the sledges themselves could help explain their origins. Sue Gatenby, the Museum’s Conservation Scientist enlisted the help of botanical expert, John Ford, to analyse all the sledges in our collection. In fact we have six, three from Mawson’s expedition and another three said to be from Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s ill-fated 1912 expedition.
Botanist, John Ford, taking timber samples from the Museum’s sledges. Photo Powerhouse Museum Collection.
The botanical expert took very tiny samples for later analysis. He verified that Mawson’s Norwegian sledge was hickory, another was also hickory but the third was Corymbia (Eucalyptus) maculata or spotted gum, an Australian hardwood. But who on earth would have made a sledge of Australian gum trees? The very idea of making Antarctic sledges here in sunny Sydney seems as bizarre as an Icelandic manufacturer making surf boards or bikinis.
With his tiny torch, the botanist carefully examined the grain of the sledges. While running his eye along one of the cross pieces he asked “Does the name Worsfold mean anything to you?” Yes! I was so excited! By chance the week before one of our archivists, Jill Chapman, who knew I was researching the sledges, sent me a photocopy of a 1915 letter in the Museum’s Archives from one Alexander Worsfold, a car body builder of King Street, St Peters, an inner Western Sydney suburb. But I wondered at the time how did he fit in? (Trove wasn’t then online.) I should add that the sledges had all been out of the store and thoroughly cleaned and repaired in our conservation labs during the 1980s and photographed several times in the studio yet no-one had ever notice the name Worsfold impressed into the timber.
Alexander Worsfold’s letterhead advised that he was a “wholesale manufacturer of motor and carriage ware, especially wheels and bodies”. This was when motor car bodies were still hand-built of timber. His printed letterhead further confirmed his involvement in supplying several Antarctic explorers as it notes: “Specialities: Designer and Manufacturer of Sleighs, Skis, Toboggans and Antarctic Appliances for Dr Mawson’s Expedition, Captain Scott’s Relief, Professor David’s Magnetic Discovery”. Added in pen at the end of this list is: “Shackleton Expd 1914″.
In 1915 Worsfold had written to the Museum seeking support for his application to help the War effort as he had specific knowledge of Australian timbers. He enlisted in the AIF and went into the 9th Australian Field Ambulance where he designed a portable stretcher which looks remarkably like a sledge. Worsfold was also involved with Lawrence Hargave and his timber cellular box kites.
The timber for Worsfold’s sledges was supplied by Allen Taylor & Co. who had numerous timber mills all over New South Wales. They were also “powellised” or heated to rapidly season and preserve them. At this time there was great interest, and research undertaken, at the Museum regarding the commercial use of Australian timber. But who had knowledge in Sydney at the time to design sledges? It is said to have come from Alfred Charles Samuels who’d been at the Canadian 1896-1901 Klondike gold rush. His nickname was Klondike Dick and he ironically ended up being Mayor of the beachside suburb of Manly.
And how did Mawson find the Australian sledges in Antarctic? In “The Home of the Blizzard” he noted that the ones “built in Sydney, of Australian hard woods, included mountain ash which tended to split and spotted gum which was strong but heavy.” I can tell you that the runners on our Norwegian sledge are considerably worn but the Australian ones showed little wear.
This all goes to show that object research can be a work in progress. We add bits and gradually build up the story.
Steam yacht 'Aurora' leaving Hobart Image:Source unknown
Saturday, December 2, arrived and then began final leave-taking. “God speed” messages were received from far and wide, and intercessory services were held in the cathedrals of Sydney and Hobart… All the staff were united for the space of an hour at luncheon. Then proceeding to the vessel, I had to push my way through the vast crowd assembled at the wharf to give us a parting cheer. At 4 p.m. sharp, the telegraph was rung for the engines, and, with a final expression of good wishes from the Governor and Lady Barron, we glided out into the channel.”- Sir Douglas Mawson “The Home of the Blizzard”
Working on a sledge harness on the 'Aurora'. Image: Courtesy State Library of NSW
It’s 100 years today since Dr Douglas Mawson, Australia’s most famous Antarctic explorer and scientist, left Hobart, Tasmania, aboard the steam yacht Aurora bound for Antarctica on the 1911-1914 Australian Antarctic Expedition (AAE).
H8144, sledge used on the Mawson expedition. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
For years one of my most favourite Museum objects has sat quietly in the our basement store, only seen by a small number of privileged visitors on Basement Tours – one of Mawson’s principal sledges from this expedition even stencilled with his name “Mawson – Adelaide”. (We have three in all!).
Can you imagine what this sledge would have seen if it could speak to us? On 2 December 1911 it was one of the 20 Norwegian-made sledges lashed to the ship’s chart-house, an extension of the bridge, and on the poop deck of the ship crowded with supplies. Mawson had ordered the sledges earlier in the year from L. Hagen & Co. of Christiania (Oslo) a sporting goods manufacturer of skis, ice-skates and rifles, who also supplied various British and Norwegian Antarctic expeditions. It was made of hickory and American ash. A further 17 sledges were made in Sydney but that’s another story for the next post.
This expedition was undertaken during the pioneering years of Australia’s involvement in Antarctica when Mawson’s team undertook mapping and magnetic observations, collected geological specimens and undertook weather notes. Teams of three men with three sledges would go out for weeks fanning out for a distance of up to 300 km from the hut at Cape Denison.
Each of the sledging parties had similar equipment loaded onto the three sledges. The equipment list for these makes fascinating reading today: a Willesden-drill tent; three one-man reindeer-fur sleeping bags; cooking equipment including mugs, spoons, scales, matches and fuel; a repair outfit with spare copper wire, needles and thread to repair the harnesses, tents and clothes; a medical kit with bandages, ophthalmic drugs for treating snow blindness, scissors, forceps, scalpel and surgical needles; photographic equipment with a quarter-plate camera; and surveying equipment including a 3-inch transit theodolite, logarithmic tables, note books, maps, dividers, set squares, prismatic compass and clinometer. Other equipment taken included: binoculars, a hypsometer (for determining altitude), thermometers and specimen labels; “sporting” equipment including a 22-gauge rifle, ammunition, knife, sharpening stone and fishing line; a waterproof clothes bag, reindeer skin boots (finnesko) stuffed with moisture-absorbent sennaegrass (a dry grass from Lappland) and spare clothing; a pick, spades, skis and boots, crampons, harnesses for men and tow ropes. To set up depots they carried a depot flag and bamboo pole, stays, and damp-proof tins to deposit records at depots. A total of six one-gallon (4.55 litre) tins of kerosene fuel, nine weeks’ supply of food for the men, and dried seal meat, blubber and pemmican for the dogs, were also packed. The total weight of the three laden sledges was 1,723 pounds (781 kg).
But the scientific importance of Mawson’s 1911-1914 AAE expedition has been overshadowed by an amazing trek undertaken by Mawson himself. On 10 November 1913 Mawson, accompanied by Dr Xavier Mertz and Lieutenant B. (Belgrave) E.S. Ninnis, left the base at Cape Denison, taking three sledges and sixteen dogs. After thirty-four days of hard travelling they reached a point 315 miles (507 km) inland from the base before heading back. Tragically Ninnis died when he and his sledge, which was carrying most of the food, fell into a deep crevasse. On the long journey back the two men ate the dogs and Mertz died from cold and exhaustion. Mawson struggled on alone, persistently taking his meteorological readings and cutting his sledge in half to reduce its weight. He arrived back at the hut only hours after his ship had left to return to Australia. Mawson remained in Antarctica with the wintering party and returned home in 1914.
Mawson's cut down sledge used on his epic journey. Image:Courtesy National Library of Australia
The AAE expedition is now remembered more for this trek, in which Mawson made a remarkable and unsurpassed solo sledging journey of about 100 miles (161 km), than for its scientific achievements.
If you’d like to see Mawson’s sledge it’s now on display at the Powerhouse Museum’s Discovery Centre at Castle Hill.
H4730 Scott’s unopened tin of tea made by Tower Tea Limited, England, 1895-1905, from the 1901-1904 British Antarctic Expedition. Gift of Mrs Watson, 1946.
On the base of this one pound (0.45 kg) unopened tin of Tower brand tea in our collection is the label “This tin of tea was cached by Commander R.F. Scott during his journey towards the South Pole in 1902. It was recovered and brought to New Zealand by the Shackleton expedition in 1908″. (This was Scott’s first expedition, not the one where he tragically died in 1912).
So, British Antarctic expeditioners drank tea which is to be expected. But what else? We know from Mawson’s wonderful account of the Australasian Antarctic Expedition of 1911-1914 in ‘The Home of the Blizzard’ that while on trips away from their hut hauling sledges over the ice, they drank tea for lunch and Cadbury’s cocoa with dried milk and sugar at breakfast and dinner. Man-hauling the sledges took heavy demands on the body so Mawson thought foods high in energy from meat, starches and sugar would sustain them.
Drawing of a Nansen cooker from 'The Home of the Blizzard'. As the name suggests it was developed by the Norwegian Arctic explorer.
The main sledging meal of the day was pretty unappetising. It was crushed up wholemeal Plasmon biscuits with pieces of pemmican (dried beef and beef fat flavoured with currants used by Arctic explorers) made by Bovril. This was cooked in the Nansen cooker, a cylindrical aluminium vessel with an enclosed kerosene primus stove which cooked the “hoosh” in an inner vessel and melted snow for tea and cocoa in an outer section. Before setting out the food was taken out of the tins and packaging and repacked into weekly rations to save time and weight while sledging. The hoosh compound and cocoa/dried milk/sugar mixture were prepared in the right proportions while the tea was sewn into small muslin bags ready to be dropped into the cooker. These may have been the world’s first tea bags. The sledging supplies were put into calico bags then stored in waterproof bags on the sledges. The Museum has one of Mawson’s sledges which still has the box with a half circle of timber chocks to hold the bulky Nansen cooker in place.
Mawson’s sledge from the 1911-1914 expedition showing the box on which the Nansen cooker was placed. Gift of the Australian Museum, 1967.
Food consumed in Mawson’s hut at Cape Denison was totally different to that eaten by the summer sledging parties. Mawson was keenly aware of the monotony of being confined in the hut during Antarctic winters and the importance of food. Any and every special event was celebrated, especially birthdays.
Photograph of a menu celebrating Christmas in 1930 on board the ship “Discovery” with photographs of the British Australian and New Zealand Antarctic Expedition members 1929-1931. Gift of Harold Fletcher, 1987.
Expeditioners took turns in being the hut cook and messman and Mrs Beeton inspired them all to outdo each other. They served up lashings of puff-pastry, steam-puddings, jellies, blanc-manges, curried and spiced seal, fried penguin and tinned vegetables. As Mawson put it “Cooks were broadly classified as ‘Crook Cooks’ and ‘Unconventional Cooks’ by the eating public. Such flattering titles as ‘Assistant Grand Past Master of the Crook Cooks’ Association’ or ‘Associate of the Society of Muddling Messmen’ were not empty inanities”.
Cooking in a hut in Antarctica where the inside temperature wasn’t much above freezing often caused problems. The hapless cooks served frozen honey on the toast, burnt the porridge and had tins exploding in the oven while thawing. The dried remnants of one tin of shattered baked beans were apparent on the hut walls and door for weeks. One of the cooks with a military background facetiously referred to this hazard as “platoon firing in the starboard oven”.
Numerous food companies donated goods for the 1911 expedition and many of them are familiar to us today including CSR, Nestles, Cerebos, Arnotts and Schwepps. All sorts of delicacies made the trip down to Antarctica including preserved figs, port wine, preserved fruit, and canned rabbit and fish. But by far the most popular was chocolate. It was distributed every Saturday night and became the hut currency being used for betting, games of chance and sweeps on the monthly wind-velocity readings. Two hut members who weren’t bothered with chocolate acted as the “bank” and bankruptcies occurred.
It’s apparent that the type of food eaten in the huts on Antarctic expeditions was the same or similar to what was being eaten by upper middleclass British and Australian families at the turn of the twentieth century, except for the inclusion of seal and penguin meat. So how has eating in extremes changed a century later? When Australians, James Castrission and Justin Jones, were the first to successfully paddle across the Tasman Sea in a kayak between Australia and New Zealand in 2007-2008 they had similar problems of nutritional requirements, convenience, cooking and the plain monotony of their food as explained in James’ very readable account, Crossing the Ditch.
In place of pemmican and biscuits they took modern dehydrated meals which they cryo-vacked into airtight plastic bags. Instead of a Nansen cooker they used a flameless heating pad in a small bucket with 100 ml of salt water (the salt water infused with the pad and created an exothermic reaction providing the same amount of heat as a microwave for 40 seconds). A meal would be poured into a foil bag with a sachet of olive oil and fresh water and the foil bag added to the “cooking water” for heating. Their favourites were roast chicken, spaghetti Bolognese and chicken babotjie. The worst meal was Thai green curry. Chocolate bars were used to barter and a homemade fruit cake was their delicacy. James and Justin are now in training for their next great adventure, Crossing the Ice, a world first attempt at an unsupported 2200 km, 3-month trek on skis hauling sledges, like Scott, to the South Pole. They leave in November 2011. I expect they’ll be packing lots of roast chicken and spag. bol.
85/1042 French children’s toy theatre, “La Pleine Mer” (The Open Sea), 1836, showing the three main elements, a sea background, waves in the centre and tropical vegetation foreground. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
After working at this Museum for decades I still find it breathtaking uncovering the treasures we have buried away down in our vaults. An academic from New Zealand emailed me to have a look at a French children’s toy theatre, “La Pleine Mer” (The Open Sea). I vaguely knew about it but never got it all out. What an amazing and incredibly rare object. You can think of it as natural history and French exploration colliding with education and entertainment for children.
The theatre has 27 printed and hand-coloured lithographic cardboard pieces with scenes set in the South Pacific. The backdrop has two French ships under sail, the middle ground a vaudeville-style group of five waves to give a bit of depth and a foreground of lush tropical vegetation around a reef battered by breakers.
The theatre, which was made J. Pintard, Rue Saint-Jacques, Paris, in 1836, has 6 scripts (in French) and lithographs produced by Charles Letaille. The idea was that an adult or older child read the script while younger children slid in or attached a number of loose pieces including boats and individual figures inserted into the scene as directed in the play.
Collection Powerhouse Museum
This all sounds fairly standard for a children’s toy theatre until you look carefully at the content of the script, which we’ve had translated. They give the most amazing and exotic descriptions of maritime adventures and aspects of Australia, New Zealand, the Solomon Islands and New Guinea in the 1830s which couldn’t be more further removed from the lives of the wealthy French children for whom it was made.
One play, “The Whale” describes a whale hunt and tells children about the uses of whale products (whale rib bones for umbrellas and whale fat boiled on board in large vats for oil). It concludes with the gruesome description of the crampon-wearing sailors climbing over the carcass of the whale tied to the side of the ship to remove the ribs, skin and fat.
Detail of a scene from the toy theatre’s “The Shark” play. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Another one, “The Shark” begins with a deceptively tranquil description of a ship becalmed in the hot tropics. The pace picks up quickly with nail biting anticipation as it is revealed that the ship’s master is repeatedly diving from the ship hauling himself up on a rope to cool off from the heat while a short distance away a shark’s fin creates a “frothing shimmering wake”. Climbing into a small boat, the sailors go to his rescue. Gripped with fear they “could all foresee the struggle that was about to take place between themselves and the shark; a terrible struggle with a man as the contest”. Ironically, the victim in the play ends up being the 16-foot shark which is split open by the ship’s cook. In a play which initially evokes terror the mood is transformed into humour when the sailors discover that a man’s otter-skin hat belonging to the ship’s doctor is inside the shark’s stomach. (Clothes and belongings hung over the side of ships were regularly eaten by sharks).
Inspiration for theatre’s “The Shark” scene was taken from John Singleton Copley’s 1778 painting “Watson and the Shark” in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. Image: Courtesy National Gallery of Art, Washington
The really interesting thing about the lithographic images and the content of the plays can be traced to paintings, books and journals of the period. According to Louise Mitchell, a former Powerhouse Curator, who wrote about the theatre in her article “La Pleine Mer Sailing over a cardboard sea” in “The Australian Antique Collector”, in 1988, the lithograph depicting New Holland natives tumbling from their capsized canoe while spearing fish, can be traced to an illustration by the Scottish engraver and miniaturist, John Heaviside Clark (c.1777-1863). Clark had never seen Australian aborigines but adhered to the popular European imagery of them as being noble and savage sportsmen. The illustration appeared in a book published in London in 1813 with the title “Field sports … of the Native Inhabitants of New South Wales”. The shark attack lithograph was derived from the well-known American romantic horror-painting of 1778 by John Singleton Copley (1738-1815) “Watson and the Shark”.
In keeping with most toymakers of the period, the theatre’s manufacturer, Pintard produced a variety of toys and related material aimed at educating children in art, geography, scripture, history and natural history. This theatre looked at navigation, maritime life, exploration, geography and the people of the Pacific. Advertising his stock at the conclusion of the “La Pleine Mer” script, he claimed that the moral teaching in its purest form is the basis of all these little educational works. Not only is this toy probably one of the earliest in our collection directly related to Australia but the stories, the humour, the melodrama and images are as fresh today as they were in 1836.
2008/121/1 Janet Vanderfield's doll's house, 1942. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
It was a Tuesday morning. I was working on a PowerPoint presentation – a training session for our Museum volunteers, a couple of meetings were scheduled, labels were due at our Print Media department, public enquiries needed attention and the never-diminishing pile of acquisition documentation beckoned, then the phone rang. A softly-spoken older woman, Janet Vanderfield, wanted to know if we’d be interested in having her doll’s house. I immediately created a list in my head of the doll’s houses already in the Museum’s collection. There’s a modern one by Dinosaur Designs ; the 1930s one fashioned from an agricultural machinery packing case used on a property near Gunnedah, in North-west NSW; the tin-printed Mettoy one from the 1950s; one made from match sticks; a charming carved one by the British toymaker Yootha Rose; and the fabulous, over-the-top, 20-room Bosdyk doll’s house acquired last year and at least a couple more. We had lots already!
Nevertheless, I asked if it would be possible for her to take some photos of it and email them to me. No email, no problem, prints through the post would be fine. And would you happen to have any photos of yourself as a girl with the doll’s house? I always check, just in case. You’ll have a look. Excellent. I’ll look forward to seeing them.
Janet Vanderfield aged 7 in 1942. Image courtsey Janet Vanderfield
A couple of weeks passed and a small envelope arrived with the requested photos. On top was a copy of a grainy photo of shy, 7-year-old Janet Vanderfield taken on Christmas Day in 1942 in the backyard of her Hurlstone Park (a Sydney suburb) home with her impressive Christmas present, a fine mock-Tudor doll’s house. It had been carefully carried out into the sunshine and Janet dressed in her best white voile dress for photos to send to grandma and the aunties in Scotland.
The other photos in the envelope Janet had taken herself depicted the doll’s house and its furniture, a microcosm of 1940s upper middle-class domestic life when entertainment came from the wireless in the lounge room and refrigeration was provided by the ice chest in the kitchen.
I learnt later that the doll’s house had been purchased unfurnished from the famous Sydney toy and model shop, Walther & Stevenson Ltd. Over a 5-year period Janet would often travel into “town” on the tram with her mother or auntie attired in hats and gloves and go into Walther & Stevenson’s to select a piece of furniture for the doll’s house. This phenomenon of the child collector was common in the 1930s and 40s, some children built up impressive lead toy farm sets and others Hornby train layouts.
2008/121/1-14:16 Doll's house lounge room furniture. Can you spot the missing fire iron? Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Only special “careful” friends were allowed to play with Janet’s doll’s house. Auntie made the curtains, bedspread and cushions, and father put in the chunky 1940s electric lights. When she had outgrown the doll’s house Janet’s mother had tried to encourage her to give it to a nearby children’s home but Janet had received so much enjoyment gradually collecting the furniture she couldn’t part with it. The doll’s house remained in Janet’s possession for 66 years, immaculately maintained throughout her life and over that time only one small piece, a fireplace fire iron, had been lost. Although tempted to add contemporary pieces to the doll’s house she resisted.
2008/121/1 Interior shot of the doll's house with 'Doll's House Dolly'. Collection: Powerhouse Museum
Because doll’s houses are bulky items to store once children have outgrown them they are not often kept and relatively few survive. If they do it’s extremely unusual for the original loose furniture to be retained as it’s always vulnerable to separation, change and loss over time. For Janet, an only child who never married, there was never the temptation to let her own children or nieces and nephew play with the doll’s house. It remained intact, a time capsule of Australian domestic social history and childhood in the early 1940s.
For Janet to give up her precious doll’s house with all its memories of her childhood and family must have been a wrench. I carefully documented her memories of it, and when it was chosen for display in the new acquisitions showcase in the Museum’s foyer, I invited Janet in and photographed it with her. She was delighted and was grateful to me for making the whole process of relinquishing her doll’s house easier.
Janet Vanderfield with her doll's house on display in the Museum in 2008
The Museum has a large collection of toys, purchased in the 1980s, from an adult collector. They are a superb group of mainly tin toys and Hornby trains which have great visual appeal but they have no stories or memories associated with their use. Accordingly, Miss Vanderfield’s doll’s house was a wonderful acquisition and I feel privileged to have been involved in recording and perpetuating the memory of its use.
P.S. Later that year I went on to acquire yet another doll’s house with a completely different story and memories. It was made by staff at The Sydney Morning Herald and presented to eleven-year-old Elaine Sellers in 1946. Elaine’s father, Charles Sellers (Charlie), had always promised to make her a doll’s house. He was a very popular staff member at the ‘Herald’ working in the Compositing Section of the famous Sydney newspaper. After he tragically died of Malaria in a Japanese prisoner of war camp in Thailand in 1945 his colleagues at the ‘Herald’ decided to do something for Elaine and made the doll’s house. As a Curator I see my role increasingly being about recording these types of memories and stories.
There are other posts about the Bosdyk Doll’s House
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