Memory, poetry and a good buffet dinner

“I’ve always had a good memory…which is helpful for my poetry though it makes it rather like a buffet dinner with many small dishes all over the bench.”[i]
Birthdays always prompt a level of reflection and earlier this month Melbourne poet Chris Wallace-Crabbe celebrated his 80th. His writing reveals that these years have not been spent idly, indeed the breadth of subject matter traversed through his poetry would put many an upscale dinner buffet to shame. Not only a leading Australian poet but also essayist, librettist, fiction writer, reviewer, academic, literary critic and editor, Wallace-Crabbe has certainly offered readers a full menu.

Professor Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Media and Publications Services Office Photograph Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, UMAIC2949
Professor Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Media and Publications Services Office Photograph Collection, University of Melbourne Archives, UMAIC2949

30 boxes of material sit nonchalantly on their steel shelves at UMA, ranging from a 1951 manuscript to drafts of poems written in 2010. Behind this cardboard façade are the inner workings of this enigmatic man; working diaries & notebooks, journals, sketch books, literary and personal correspondence, manuscripts of poems, essays and an opera, reviews and genealogical documents are neatly packed and listed in the archives catalogue. Correspondence with C.B. Christesen founding editor of Meanjin, is also contained in the Meanjin Editorial records of C.B. Christesen collection.

The human memory however is not as ordered as this.

In an interview with Graham Little, tucked securely within the spread of the archive, the role of memory in writing poetry, and memory as a tool for, and of, language is exposed. Fed “the drug of language”[ii] from an early age, Wallace-Crabbe’s poetry is certainly a lesson in the bond between language and human expression, but also how language affects and is affected by memory. In “Domain Road” he wraps the place of humanity in the enormity of the universe within the memory of his childhood self.[iii]

…and the child knows he is very small in the garden
smaller still in the world
as nothing in the – how do you call it – universe
so that his being here
fragile in a rustling suburban garden among heaving ripples
of green is a kind of miracle
in the end he is grateful

Browsing the journals and notebooks containing Wallace-Crabbe’s musings and cuttings, snippets of conversations and unfinished thoughts, a joyfulness and enthusiasm for life is abundantly clear. A natural humour too is evident, the sense that despite its savageness and spite, life is funny. Musings like “I like to see a priest go shopping”, “ski slope vs cutlery drawer” and “How not to be a bore at 90” intrigue, and his recollection of a dream “riding a motorbike at world record speeds, over steep hills” finished with the thought “That’s something” [iv], provide insight to a creative mind.
For writers, students and lovers of literature, there is much to take from Wallace-Crabbe’s archive, and much to learn from his process of writing, creating and remembering.

 

 

[i] Chris Wallace-Crabbe interviewed by Graham Little [n.d.] pg3, Box 1, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, University of Melbourne Archives, 2011.0093

[ii] Chris Wallace-Crabbe interviewed by Graham Little [n.d.] pg10, Box 1, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, University of Melbourne Archives, 2011.0093

[iii] Chris Wallace-Crabbe interviewed by Graham Little [n.d.], pg9,Box 1, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, University of Melbourne Archives, 2011.0093

[iv] Notebook, 2006, Box 2, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, University of Melbourne Archives, 2011.0093

 

Bright & Hitchcock, Geelong Archives and the Apricot and Blue 19th Century Dress

Bright & Hitchcocks, Geelong (1853-1968) Day dress 1865-1870 Gift of Miss Bell, 1973 D243.a-c-1973, National Gallery of Victoria
Bright & Hitchcocks, Geelong (1853-1968)
Day dress 1865-1870
Gift of Miss Bell, 1973
D243.a-c-1973, National Gallery of Victoria

I found out about the existence of the University Archives because of a dress. That may sound strange, but the full-skirted apricot and blue patterned silk dress, dating from about 1865 to 1870, has a small label stitched to the inside of its waistband. It reads “From Bright & Hitchcocks, Geelong”. The dress is in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria and I came across it when I was curating an exhibition titled “Australian Made: One Hundred Years of Fashion”. It opened at the Ian Potter Centre, NGV Australia in May 2010. This dress was one of the earliest items on display and it is remarkable, not only for its almost pristine condition, but also because it appears to be the oldest surviving garment bearing an Australian label. It was not usual for makers or retailers to stitch labels into garments until the twentieth century. The majority of nineteenth century garments therefore are unlabeled.

Knowing its origins means a context can be provided for the Bright and Hitchcocks dress. Research into the company’s archives, which are held at the University of Melbourne, threw light on the networks of trade and consumption in Australia in the second half of the nineteenth century. As I read through the original hefty volumes of letters from Bright and Hitchcocks’ London agent to the managers in Geelong, I began to get a sense of how items for the Australian market were selected, what sold well, and what the company didn’t find worthwhile stocking. This clearly wasn’t a passive commercial relationship where, as is too often assumed, the current fashions in British goods were simply shipped out to the colonies in support of a society that was transposed holus-bolus from one side of the world to the other.

Established in 1850, Bright and Hitchcocks was a drapery and general merchants business. It stocked a broad range of imported goods, including men’s, women’s and children’s clothing and accessories, as well as dress fabrics and trims, blankets, carpets and household linen. It is commonly thought that ‘readymade’ fashionable dress (which could be bought over the counter) was not available at this time, however the company letters tell us otherwise. A letter from the London agent dated 24 August 1865 states, ‘By this mail I send assortment (25 dresses) new goods made for us … the prettiest goods I have seen…” Is it possible that the dress in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria was one of these twenty-five? Its styling dates it to the same era and if it is not from this particular group of imports, it certainly appears that the dress came into the country as a readymade item. Donated to the gallery in 1973, its provenance links it to the Bell family whosettled beyond Geelong on the Bellarine peninsula in the 1840s.

After more than a century of retailing to the residents of Geelong and further afield, Bright and Hitchcocks closed it doors in 1968. However its building still stands today on Moorabool street in the centre of the city as a reminder of this pioneering commercial venture.

For more information about the “Australian Made: One Hundred Years of Fashion” see

http://www.artabase.net/exhibition/1841-australian-made-100-years-of-fashion

http://media.ngv.vic.gov.au/2010/05/20/australian-made-100-years-of-fashion/

“Australian Made: One Hundred Years of Fashion from the 1850s to the 1950s” by Laura Jocic is available at the University of Melbourne Library

Contributor:

Laura Jocic, PhD candidate, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne.

Bright & Hitchcock: Geelong Archives and the Apricot and Blue 19TH Century Dress

[Reposted from the UMA Business Archives blog]

 

Bright and Hitchcock dress
Bright & Hitchcocks, Geelong (1853-1968)
Day dress 1865-1870
Gift of Miss Bell, 1973
D243.a-c-1973, National Gallery of Victoria

I found out about the existence of the University Archives because of a dress. That may sound strange, but the full-skirted apricot and blue patterned silk dress, dating from about 1865 to 1870, has a small label stitched to the inside of its waistband. It reads “From Bright & Hitchcocks, Geelong”. The dress is in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria and I came across it when I was curating an exhibition titled “Australian Made: One Hundred Years of Fashion”. It opened at the Ian Potter Centre, NGV Australia in May 2010. This dress was one of the earliest items on display and it is remarkable, not only for its almost pristine condition, but also because it appears to be the oldest surviving garment bearing an Australian label. It was not usual for makers or retailers to stitch labels into garments until the twentieth century. The majority of nineteenth century garments therefore are unlabeled.

Knowing its origins means a context can be provided for the Bright and Hitchcocks dress. Research into the company’s archives, which are held at the University of Melbourne, threw light on the networks of trade and consumption in Australia in the second half of the nineteenth century. As I read through the original hefty volumes of letters from Bright and Hitchcocks’ London agent to the managers in Geelong, I began to get a sense of how items for the Australian market were selected, what sold well, and what the company didn’t find worthwhile stocking. This clearly wasn’t a passive commercial relationship where, as is too often assumed, the current fashions in British goods were simply shipped out to the colonies in support of a society that was transposed holus-bolus from one side of the world to the other.

Established in 1850, Bright and Hitchcocks was a drapery and general merchants business. It stocked a broad range of imported goods, including men’s, women’s and children’s clothing and accessories, as well as dress fabrics and trims, blankets, carpets and household linen. It is commonly thought that ‘readymade’ fashionable dress (which could be bought over the counter) was not available at this time, however the company letters tell us otherwise. A letter from the London agent dated 24 August 1865 states, ‘By this mail I send assortment (25 dresses) new goods made for us … the prettiest goods I have seen…” Is it possible that the dress in the collection of the National Gallery of Victoria was one of these twenty-five? Its styling dates it to the same era and if it is not from this particular group of imports, it certainly appears that the dress came into the country as a readymade item. Donated to the gallery in 1973, its provenance links it to the Bell family whosettled beyond Geelong on the Bellarine peninsula in the 1840s.

After more than a century of retailing to the residents of Geelong and further afield, Bright and Hitchcocks closed it doors in 1968. However its building still stands today on Moorabool street in the centre of the city as a reminder of this pioneering commercial venture.

For more information about the “Australian Made: One Hundred Years of Fashion” see

http://www.artabase.net/exhibition/1841-australian-made-100-years-of-fashion

http://media.ngv.vic.gov.au/2010/05/20/australian-made-100-years-of-fashion/

Australian Made: One Hundred Years of Fashion from the 1850s to the 1950s by Laura Jocic is available at the University of Melbourne Library.

Contributor: Laura Jocic, PhD candidate, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, University of Melbourne.

Provenance in Pictures: Tracking the Ownership of Three Early Printed Books

Last week a group of Melbourne bibliophiles were treated to a delightful talk by preeminent bookman Nicolas Barker, editor of The Book Collector, and whose bibliography records an impressive 1,000+ entries.[1]

Barker examined twenty or so works from Special Collections and talked to the salient points of each book. This post highlights three of the selected items that had multiple signs of ownership, all of which caught Barker’s eye.

 

Johannes Meder, Quadragesimale de filio prodigo et de angeli ipsius ammonitione salubri per sermones diuisum [Basel: Michael Furter, 1495].

 

Title-page of the Quadragesimale

 

Judging by the number of inscriptions on the title-page, this copy of Meder’s Quadragesimale certainly travelled, but not very far. All of them can be localised to the province of Limburg in the Netherlands. The earliest is the inscription by Johan van Kessenich, shown above in between two other inscriptions towards the head of the title-page. Kessenich was born ca. 1522, served as steward of the Augustinian cloister of St Elisabeth in Nunhem, and died ca. 1608. The book then passed to a Wilhelm Horst, whose tidy inscription notes that he was a pastor in the town of Haelen (just 1km south of Nunhem), and came into possession of the Quadragesimale the same year as Kessenich’s approximate date of death. The last two pieces of evidence recorded on the title-page puts the book in the library of the Augustijnenkerk (Church of the Augustinians) in Maastricht, about 55km southwest of Haelen.

 

Quadragesimale binding

 

The book was bound in a contemporary style by the twentieth-century French binder Roger Devauchelle (1915-1993), who preserved the original clasp catches, the paper spine label, and presumably the pastedowns: two fragments (according to the catalogue entry) from a thirteenth-century manuscript.

 

Manuscript pastedown

 

Affixed to the front pastedown is the book label of ‘B. Couissinier’, and Devauchelle’s stamp can be found in the upper-left corner.[2]

Purchased by the Friends of the Baillieu Library with funds from the George Shaw Trust.

 

Eusebius Pamphilus, [Greek title:] Evangelicae praeparatio lib. XV … [with] Evangelicae demonstrationis lib. X. Paris: Robert Estienne, 1544-1545.

 

Signature of Rudolf Gwalther

 

The earliest sign of ownership on Estienne’s 1544 edition of Eusebius is an inscription dated just five years after its publication. It reads: ‘Sum Rodolphi Gualtheri Tigurini 1549’. The owner, Rudolf Gwalther (1519-1586), was a Reformed Protestant pastor in Zurich (‘Tigurum’) who married the daughter of Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531), one of the leaders of the Reformation in Switzerland. He became head of the Zurich church upon the death of Zwingli’s successor Heinrich Bullinger (1504-1575).

 

Heidegger collection inscription

 

The book can next be placed in another Zurich collection, the ‘Bibliothecae Heideggeriana’. This collection was formed by Hans Heinrich Heidegger (1711-1763), whose son, Johann Heinrich (1738-1823), continued to expand the library. A slip pasted on the front free endpaper with the date ‘1783’ written upon it suggests the Eusebius was acquired by the younger Heidegger that year. The Heideggeriana collection was sold in 1810 when Johann moved to Geneva.[3]

 

Stamp of Hachette and Co.

 

Sometime after the Heidegger sale, the Eusebius made its way to France and into the stock of the great bookshop and publishing house L. Hachette et Compagnie, whose acquisition stamp on the title-page dates to 1918.

 

E. Doheny book label

 

The volume next appeared in the library of Estelle Doheny (1875-1958), who amassed one of the great twentieth-century book collections in America. Doheny left her library, which included a volume of the Gutenberg Bible, to St John’s Seminary in Camarillo, California.[4] In her bequest, Doheny stipulated that the collection must be kept together for 25 years after her death. In 1986, the Archdiocese of Los Angeles and the Seminary Board of Directors made the controversial decision to sell the Doheny collection. The books were auctioned by Christie’s, New York, in a series of sales held between 1987 and 1989. The Eusebius was sold to Parsons Books in the 1 February 1988 sale (lot 559).[5]

Purchased by the Ivy M. Pendlebury bequest in memory of Gerald Frederic Pendlebury.

 

De recta pronunciatione Latinae linguae dialogus. Antwerp:  Christophe Plantin, 1586.

 

Stamp of Anton Fugger dated 1586

 

This copy of Plantin’s 1586 edition of Lipsius has a long connection to families that wielded financial power. The first being the stamp of Anton Fugger dated 1586. He was a member of a wealthy German banking and merchant family, their financial prospects secured by his namesake, Anton Fugger (1493-1560), whose trade empire extended to the Americas and the West Indies, and who also held mining interests in Scandinavia.

 

Bookplate of Zacharias Geizkofler von Gailenbach

 

This beautifully engraved bookplate is the most physically impressive piece of provenance evidence found among these three books. Measuring 17 x 14 cm, the ex libris belonged to Zacharias Geizkofler von Gailenbach (1560-1617), who had his name and that of his wife, Maria (nee von Rehelingen), along with her date of birth, engraved along the central oval frame. From 1597, Geizkofler served as Reichspfennigmeister (treasurer) of the Holy Roman Empire, and as an adviser to the emperors Rudolf II (1552-1612) and Matthias (1557-1619).

 

Lipsius title page

 

The Lipsius eventually travelled to what was Austria-Hungary. There it came into the possession of the noble Magyar family, Zichy, though which family member has yet to be confirmed. The title-page is stamped with the arms and name of Count Ödön Zichy. This may refer to Count Ödön (1809-1848), a governmental administrator who was executed as a result of a court martial, or Count Ödön (1811-1894), founder of the Oriental Museum in Vienna and a great patron of art and industry.

 

Bookplate of Jan Szasz

 

The second Hungarian collector to own this book was Jan Szasz, about whom I have been able to find very little.[6] It appears, however, that Szasz might have immigrated to the Antipodes, for a number of books with his bookplate are found in Australian institutional and private libraries.

Purchased by the Ivy M. Pendlebury bequest in memory of Gerald Frederic Pendlebury.

Anthony Tedeschi (Deputy Curator, Special Collections)

—

[1] See A.S.G. Edwards, Nicolas Barker at Eighty: A List of His Publications to Mark His 80th Birthday (New Castle, DE; London: Oak Knoll Press; Bernard Quaritch Ltd., 2013).

[2] Do you recognise the ‘B. Couissinier’ bookplate? If you know who he or she was, please leave a comment or email me at Special Collections.

[3] Selecta artis typographicae monumenta e bibliotheca Heideggeriana sive Catalogus librorum seculo XV impressorum … qui pro adjectis in margine pretiis publica auctionis lege divenduntur d. 18. Jun… (Zurich, 1810)

[4] The Gutenberg Bible volume was purchased by the Maruzen Co. of Tokyo for USD $5.3m (with premium) in the 22 October 1987 sale (lot 1). It was acquired by Keio University Library in March 1996.

[5] The Estelle Doheny Collection … Part III: Printed Books and Manuscripts including Western Americana (New York: Christie, Manson & Woods, 1988) 173 (lot 559)

[6] As with the book label of M. or Mme Couissinier, I would welcome any information on this collector named Szasz.

Vale Trevor John Hart

Service of Thanksgiving for the life of Trevor Jonh Hart 14 May 2014

Trevor Hart came to the University of Melbourne Archives (UMA) in January 2001 as its Business Archivist.
Trevor was well placed to hold this position due to his previous work with the ANZ Bank: both his familiarity with the business environment of banking and his experience as an archivist were important. His career in the banking industry dated from 1958 and his love of history led him to his eventual career in archiving: he became ANZ Group Archivist from 1983 and Manager of the ANZ Bank Museum and ANZ Art Collection in 1985.

At UMA, Trevor’s management of the business collections was a large undertaking in many senses. UMA commenced collecting business records in 1960, and by 2001 they occupied almost a half of the available shelving. Records from individual companies typically measured hundreds of metres whereas records acquired from the University or the labour movement were rarely this large. Trevor’s task was to arrange and describe these records and make them available to the public as well as to acquire more business records. Within a few weeks of arriving, he commenced negotiations with Colonial Mutual about their records and commenced a project to have listed the 27 metres of Defunct Company Records from the Registrar-General’s Department deposited at UMA by the Public Record Office of Victoria.

Making records available to the public by arranging and describing them was resource intensive and demanding for a lone Business Archivist, but Trevor was soon ably joined by others. Tony Miller, also previously of ANZ Archives, commenced at UMA and assisted Trevor with business collections amongst other duties. Project archivists worked with him on larger collections.

Trevor worked with Gil Ralph, former Western Mining Company Executive and Archives Advisory Board Chair, to establish a group of business volunteers. John Dew, John Reynolds, Allan Schurmann, and Don Fairweather assisted Trevor to make or improve inventories of large business collections. Trevor’s friend, Marten Syme, came on board to list the records of the Port Fairy Solicitor, J. W. Powling & Company.

Simultaneously, Trevor worked with Michael Piggott, Archivist Jane Ellen, and Professor David Merrett, to review the UMA business archives collecting policy. The resulting publication, ‘Making archival choices for business history‘,  was published in the Australian Economic History Review 2004 44:2 185.  Its purpose was to develop a strategy for future acquisitions and re-examine existing holdings and was based on a methodology that had been devised by the business archivists at the Minnesota Historical Society, US. The new collection policy became the script from which Trevor worked to acquire business records for the remaining years of his tenure in the position.

In 2007 Trevor ceased working for UMA and returned to part-time consulting as school archivist at Camberwell Grammar School, Ruyton Girl’s School and Eltham Secondary College. Yet everywhere we look at UMA we see evidence of his dedicated and energetic work in the inventories he created and the collections he acquired. His conviviality will be remembered by those who worked with him, especially his promotion of ‘archives talk’ and Sudoku at morning tea. Farewell Trevor.

Contributor: Sue Fairbanks

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