Photographer Jacob Edward Rosch was born in 1861 in Poughkeepsie, New York, the son of French immigrant Frank Rosch (born circa 1830) and German immigrant Abigail (last name unknown, born circa 1834); the couple had at least four sons and four daughters. The father was a chair and cabinet maker. At age 13, Jacob worked as an errand boy for a candy store. Circa 1876, he was apprenticed to the well-known Poughkeepsie photographers, the Vail brothers; his brother had also apprenticed there. After five years with the Vails, Jacob relocated to St. Louis, Missouri and in 1881 went to work as a retoucher at the Cramer Gallery; he worked there for five years. In 1886, he opened a gallery in St. Louis with his brother Andrew J. Rosch, who managed the studio. Jacob would open another gallery in Chicago in 1891 with S.L. Stein. In 1899, he married Clara Clauss (born July 1863). Jacob was very successful, winning numerous awards around the county for his work. He was also extremely active in various associations of photographers. He was listed in censuses from 1900 through 1920 as a photographer in St. Louis.

Photographer: Unidentified

 

Location: Brisbane, Queensland; -27.46888, 153.022827

 

Description: The royal bedroom for H.R.H. The Duke of Gloucester. A charming composition in the period, Louis XV, designed and built by Ed Rosenstengel. From an original watercolour drawing by Wilfred Morden.

 

The furniture includes carved wooden pieces: a wardrobe, bed, mirrored dressing table and stool, occasional chairs and a highboy.

 

Edmund Rosenstengel (1887-1962) was born in Toowoomba. He learnt his trade as a cabinet-maker apprenticed to the business of Rosenstengel & Kleimeyer. He was later to work in Sydney, Auckland, Vancouver and Grand Rapids (USA), as well as in England and Europe, before returning to Toowoomba in 1911.

 

In 1922 he came to Brisbane and commenced business on his own account in Fortitude Valley, where he was to remain until his retirement in 1958. His work was distinguished by the use of Queensland timbers, particularly Queensland maple and silky oak, together with elaborate carving and marquetry inlay.

 

His best known public commissions include the invitation to furnish a bedroom at Government House, Brisbane, for the visit of the Duke of Gloucester in 1934, and a jewel case intended for the (then) Duchess of York. (Information taken from: K. Fahy and A. Simpson, Australian furniture: Pictorial history and dictionary 1788-1938, 1998.)

 

Rosenstengel operated out of premises located at 524 Brunswick Street, Fortitude Valley, from 1922 to 1958.

 

View this image at the State Library of Queensland: hdl.handle.net/10462/deriv/10816

Information about State Library of Queensland’s collection: pictureqld.slq.qld.gov.au/

Italian postcard by Rotalfoto, Milano, no. 82.

 

Dorothy Dandridge (1922-1965) was an American film and theatre actress, singer and dancer. She is perhaps best known for being the first African-American actress to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Carmen Jones (Otto Preminger, 1954). She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959). Dandridge also appeared in a few European films.

 

Dorothy Jean Dandridge was born in, 1922 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Ruby Dandridge (née Ruby Jean Butler), an entertainer, and Cyril H. Dandridge, a cabinet maker and minister. Under the prodding of her mother, Dorothy and her sister Vivian Dandridge began performing publicly, as the Wonder Children, later The Dandridge Sisters, usually in black Baptist churches throughout the country. Her mother would often join her daughters on stage. During her early career, she appeared in a succession of films, usually in uncredited roles. Her film debut was a bit role in the Marx Brothers comedy, A Day at the Races (Sam Wood, 1937). She also performed as a vocalist in the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater. Her breakthrough was her title role in the all-black production of Carmen Jones (Otto Preminger, 1954). Dandridge's performance as the sultry title character made her one of Hollywood's first African-American sex symbol. Carmen Jones became a worldwide success, eventually earning over $10 million at the box office and becoming one of the year's highest-earning films.

 

In 1957, after a three-year absence from film acting, Dorothy Dandridge agreed to appear in the film version of Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957), opposite an ensemble cast, including James Mason, Harry Belafonte, Joan Fontaine, Joan Collins, and Stephen Boyd. The film was controversial for its time period, and the script was revised numerous times to accommodate the Production Code requirements about interracial relationships. There occurred, however, an extremely intimate loving embrace between Dandridge and Justin that succeeded in not breaching the code. Despite the behind-the-scenes controversy and unfavorable critical reviews, the film was one of the year's biggest successes. Dandridge next starred opposite Curd Jürgens in the Italian production of Tamango. A reluctant Dandridge had agreed to appear in the film only after learning that it focused on a nineteenth century slave revolt on a cargo ship travelling from Africa to Cuba. However, she nearly withdrew her involvement when the initial script called for her to swim in the nude and spend the majority of the film in a two-piece bathing suit made of rags. When Dandridge threatened to leave the film, the script and her wardrobe was retooled to her liking. In 1959, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959). However, when the film was released, it was critically bashed and failed to recoup its financial investment.

 

Dorothy Dandridge next filmed a low-budget British thriller Malaga (László Benedek, 1960) in which she played a European woman with an Italian name. The film, co-starring Trevor Howard and Edmund Purdom, plotted a jewel robbery and its aftermath. Howard and Dandridge created some strongly understated sexual tension in the film. Malanga was withheld from a theatrical release abroad until 1960, but went unreleased in the United States until 1962. It was her final completed film appearance. Dandridge was married and divorced twice. From 1942 till 1951, she was married to dancer and entertainer Harold Nicholas Harold Nicholas. They had a daughter, Harolyn Suzanne Nicholas, who was born brain-damaged. In 1959 she married hotel owner Jack Denison. They divorced in 1962 amid financial setbacks and allegations of domestic violence. At this time, Dandridge discovered that the people who were handling her finances had swindled her out of $150,000 and that she was $139,000 in debt for back taxes. In 1965, Dorothy Dandridge died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 42. She is the subject of the HBO biographical film, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (Martha Coolidge, 1999) with Halle Berry.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

Aberystwyth University is a public research university in Aberystwyth, Wales. Aberystwyth was a founding member institution of the former federal University of Wales. The university has over 8,000 students studying across three academic faculties and 17 departments.

 

Founded in 1872 as University College Wales, Aberystwyth, it became a founder member of the University of Wales in 1894, and changed its name to the University College of Wales, Aberystwyth. In the mid-1990s, the university again changed its name to become the University of Wales, Aberystwyth. On 1 September 2007, the University of Wales ceased to be a federal university and Aberystwyth University became independent again.

 

In 2019, it became the first university to be named "University of the year for teaching quality" by The Times/Sunday Times Good University Guide for two consecutive years. It is the first university in the world to be awarded Plastic Free University status (for single-use plastic items).

 

In the middle of the 19th century, eminent Welsh people were advocating the establishment of a university in the principality. One of these, Thomas Nicholas, whose book, Middle and High Class Schools, and University Education for Wales (1863), is said to have "exerted great influence on educated Welshmen".

 

Funded through public and private subscriptions, and with five regional committees (London, Manchester, Liverpool, North and South Wales) guaranteeing funds for the first three years' running costs, the university opened in October 1872 with 26 students. Thomas Charles Edwards was the principal. In October 1875, chapels in Wales raised the next tranche of funds from over 70,000 contributors. Until 1893, when the college joined the University of Wales as a founder member, students applying to Aberystwyth sat the University of London's entrance exams. Women were admitted in 1884.

 

In 1885, a fire damaged what is now known as the Old College, Aberystwyth, and in 1897 the first 14 acres of what became the main Penglais campus were purchased. Incorporated by Royal Charter in 1893, the university installed the Prince of Wales as chancellor in 1896, the same year it awarded an honorary degree to the British prime minister, William Gladstone.

 

The university's coat of arms dates from the 1880s. The shield features two red dragons to symbolise Wales, and an open book to symbolise learning. The crest, an eagle or phoenix above a flaming tower, may signify the college's rebirth after the 1885 fire. The motto is Nid Byd, Byd Heb Wybodaeth (a world without knowledge is no world at all).

 

In the early 1900s, the university added courses that included law, applied mathematics, pure mathematics and botany. The Department for International Politics, which Aberystwyth says is the oldest such department in the world, was founded in 1919. By 1977, the university's staff included eight Fellows of the Royal Society, such as Gwendolen Rees, the first Welsh woman to be elected an FRS.

 

The Department of Sports and Exercise Science was established in 2000. Joint honours psychology degrees were introduced in September 2007, and single honours psychology in 2009.

 

The chancellor of the university is The Lord Thomas of Cwmgiedd, who took up the position in January 2018. The visitor of the university is an appointment made by the Privy Council, under the Royal Charter of the university. Since July 2014, the holder of this office is Mr Justice Sir Roderick Evans KC.

 

In 2011, the university appointed a new vice chancellor under whom the academic departments were restructured as larger subject-themed institutes.

 

In 2022, the university celebrated its 150th anniversar,y being established in 1872 (known at the time as The University College of Wales).

 

Aberystwyth is a university and seaside town as well as a community in Ceredigion, Wales. Located in the historic county of Cardiganshire, Aberystwyth means "the mouth of the Ystwyth". Aberystwyth University has been a major educational location in Wales since the establishment of University College Wales in 1872.

 

The town is situated on Cardigan Bay on the west coast of Wales, near the confluence of the River Ystwyth and Afon Rheidol. Following the reconstruction of the harbour, the Ystwyth skirts the town. The Rheidol passes through the town.

 

The seafront, with a pier, stretches from Constitution Hill at the north end of the Promenade to the harbour at the south. The beach is divided by the castle. The town is divided into five areas: Aberystwyth Town; Llanbadarn Fawr; Waunfawr; Llanbadarn; Trefechan; and the most populous, Penparcau.

 

In 2011 the population of the town was 13,040. This rises to nearly 19,000 for the larger conurbation of Aberystwyth and Llanbadarn Fawr.

  

Aberystwyth Bay from a 1748 survey by Lewis Morris (1701–1765)

The distance to Swansea is 55 miles (89 km); to Shrewsbury 60 miles (97 km); to Wrexham 63 miles (101 km); to Cardiff 76 miles (122 km); and to London 180 miles (290 km).

 

Aberystwyth is a university town and tourist destination, and forms a cultural link between North Wales and South Wales. Constitution Hill, scaled by the Aberystwyth Cliff Railway, gives access to panoramic views and to other attractions at the summit, including a camera obscura. Scenic Mid Wales landscape within easy reach of the town includes the wilderness of the Cambrian Mountains, whose valleys contain forests and meadows which have changed little in centuries. A convenient way to access the interior is by the preserved narrow-gauge Vale of Rheidol Railway.

 

Although the town is relatively modern, there are a number of historic buildings, including the remains of the castle and the Old College of Aberystwyth University nearby. The Old College was originally built and opened in 1865 as a hotel, but after the owner's bankruptcy the shell of the building was sold to the university in 1867.

 

The new university campus overlooks Aberystwyth from Penglais Hill to the east of the town centre. The station, a terminus of the main railway, was built in 1924 in the typical style of the period, mainly in a mix of Gothic, Classical Revival, and Victorian architecture.

 

The town is the unofficial capital of Mid Wales, and several institutions have regional or national offices there. Public bodies located in the town include the National Library of Wales, which incorporates the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales, one of six British regional film archives. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales maintains and curates the National Monuments Record of Wales (NMRW), providing the public with information about the built heritage of Wales. Aberystwyth is also the home to the national offices of UCAC and Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Language Society), and the site of the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research, the Welsh Books Council and the offices of the standard historical dictionary of Welsh, Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru. A purpose built Welsh Government office and an adjoining office of Ceredigion County Council are also located in the town.

 

At the 2001 census, the population of the town was 15,935. This reduced to 13,040 at the 2011 census. Including neighbouring Llanbadarn Fawr, the population was 16,420, and the greater Aberystwyth conurbation having a population of 18,749 in 2011

 

Aberystwyth experiences an oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification Cfb) similar to almost all of the United Kingdom. This is particularly pronounced due to its west coast location facing the Irish Sea. Air undergoes little land moderation and so temperatures closely reflect the sea temperature when winds are coming from the predominant onshore (westerly) direction. The nearest Met Office weather station is Gogerddan, 3 miles to the northeast, and at a similar elevation.

 

The absolute maximum temperature is 34.6 °C (94.3 °F), set during July 2006. This is also the July record maximum for all of Wales, suggesting that the area's low lying situation, aided by a possible föhn effect when winds are offshore can act to achieve high temperatures on occasion. Typically the warmest day will average 28.0 °C (82.4 °F) and 5.6 days will achieve a maximum of 25.1 °C (77.2 °F) or above.

 

The absolute minimum temperature is −13.5 °C (7.7 °F), set in January 2010. Typically 39.8 days will register an air frost.

 

Rainfall averages 1,112 mm (44 in) a year, with over 1mm recorded on 161 days. All averages refer to the 1981–2010 period.

 

There is evidence that during the Mesolithic Age the area of Tan-y-Bwlch at the foot of Pen Dinas (Penparcau) was used as a flint knapping floor for hunter-gatherers making weapons from flint that was deposited as the ice retreated.

 

The remains of a Celtic fortress on Pen Dinas (or more correctly 'Dinas Maelor'), a hill in Penparcau overlooking Aberystwyth, indicates that the site was inhabited before 700 BC. On a hill south of the present town, across the River Ystwyth, are the remains of a medieval ringfort believed to be the castle from which Princess Nest was abducted. This rare survival is now on private land and can only be accessed by arrangement.

 

The recorded history of Aberystwyth may be said to date from the building of a fortress in 1109 by Gilbert Fitz Richard (grandfather of Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow, the Cambro-Norman lord notable for his leading role in the Norman invasion of Ireland). Gilbert Fitz Richard was granted lands and the lordship of Cardigan by Henry I, including Cardigan Castle. The fortress built in Aberystwyth was located about a mile and a half south of today's town, on a hill over the south bank of the Ystwyth River, thus giving the settlement of Aberystwyth its name. The location is now known as Tan-Y-Castell.

 

Aberystwyth was usually under the control of the princes of Deheubarth, but its position close to the border with Gwynedd and Powys left it vulnerable to attacks from the leaders of those polities. The town was attacked by Gwenwynwyn ab Owain in 1197, an assault in which Maelgwn ap Rhys was captured. Llywelyn the Great attacked and seized the town in late 1208, building a castle there before withdrawing.

 

Edward I replaced Strongbow's castle in 1277, after its destruction by the Welsh. His castle was, however, built in a different location, at the current Castle Hill, the high point of the town. Between the years 1404 and 1408 Aberystwyth Castle was in the hands of Owain Glyndŵr but finally surrendered to Prince Harry (the future King Henry V of England). Shortly after this, the town was incorporated under the title of Ville de Lampadarn (the ancient name of the place being Llanbadarn Gaerog or the fortified Llanbadarn, to distinguish it from Llanbadarn Fawr, the village one mile (1.6 km) inland. It is thus styled in a Royal charter granted by Henry VIII but, by Elizabeth I's time, the town was invariably named Aberystwyth in all documents.

 

From 1639 to 1642, silver coins were minted at Aberystwyth Castle on behalf of the Royal Mint, using silver from local mines. £10,500 in currency was produced, equivalent to 2.5 million silver pennies.

 

In 1649, Parliamentarian troops razed the castle, although portions of three towers still exist. In 1988, an excavation within the castle area revealed a complete male skeleton, deliberately buried. Though skeletons rarely survive in Wales' acidic soil, this skeleton was probably preserved by the addition of lime from the collapsed building. Affectionately known as "Charlie" and now housed in the Ceredigion Museum in the town, he probably dates from the English Civil War period, and is likely to have died during the Parliamentarian siege. His image is featured in one of nine mosaics created to adorn the castle's walls.

 

The development of Aberystwyth's Port contributed to the town’s economic development during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Port improvements were carried out in both 1780 and 1836, with a new Customs House constructed in 1828. Rural industries and craftsmen were also an important part of life in this country town. The local trade directory for 1830 shows that there were in Aberystwyth: Twenty boot makers, eight bakers, two corn millers, eleven carpenters and joiners, one cooper, seven tailors, two dressmakers, two straw hat makers, two hat makers, three curriers, four saddlers, two tinsmiths, six maltsters, two skinners, four tanners, eight stonemasons, one brewer, four lime burners, three shipwrights, three wheelwrights, five cabinet makers, one nail maker, one rope maker and one sail maker.

 

The Cambrian Railways line from Machynlleth reached Aberystwyth in 1864, closely followed by rail links to Carmarthen, which resulted in the construction of the town's impressive station. The Cambrian line opened on Good Friday 1869, the same day that the new 292 metres (958 ft) Royal Pier (designed by Eugenius Birch) opened, attracting 7,000 visitors.

 

The railway's arrival gave rise to something of a Victorian tourist boom, with Aberystwyth becoming a significant holiday destination for working and middle class families from South Wales in particular. The town was once even billed as the "Biarritz of Wales". During this time, a number of hotels and fine townhouses were built including the Queens Hotel, later renamed Swyddfa'r Sir (County Office) when used as offices by the town council, and most recently used as the external scenes of the police station in the television show Hinterland. One of the largest of these hotels, "The Castle Hotel", was never completed as a hotel but, following bankruptcy, was sold cheaply to the Welsh National University Committee, a group of people dedicated to the creation of a Welsh University. The University College of Wales (later to become Aberystwyth University) was founded in 1872 in this building.

 

Aberystwyth was a contributory parliamentary borough until the Third Reform Act, which merged its representation into that of the county in 1885.

 

In 1895, various businessmen who had been behind the Aberystwyth New Harbour Company formed the Aberystwyth Improvement Company (AIC) to take over the works of the defunct Bourne Engineering & Electrical. In 1896, the AIC completed three projects: the new landside pavilion for the Royal Pier; built the Cambria Hotel (later the United Theological College) and formed Constitution Hill Ltd, to develop a Victorian theme park. Chief engineer George Croydon Marks designed all the AIC developments, including the United Kingdom's second longest funicular railway, which takes passengers up a 50% gradient to a park and camera obscura.

 

Aberystwyth hosted the National Eisteddfod in 1865, 1916, 1952 and 1992.

 

On the night of Friday, 14 January 1938, a storm with estimated wind speeds of up to 90 mph (140 km/h) struck the town. Most of the promenade was destroyed, along with 200 feet (60 m) of the pier. Many properties on the seafront were damaged, with every property from the King's Hall north affected; those on Victoria Terrace suffered the greatest damage. Work commenced on a protective coffer dam which continued into 1940, with total costs of construction coming to £70,000 (equivalent to £2.5 million today).

 

Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Language Society) held their historic first protest on Trefechan Bridge in Aberystwyth, on 2 February 1963. The first independent Welsh Evangelical Church was established in Aberystwyth (see Evangelical Movement of Wales).

 

On 1 March 2005, Aberystwyth was granted Fairtrade Town status.

 

In March 2009 mayor Sue Jones-Davies, who had played the role of Judith Iscariot in the film Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), organised a charity screening of the film. Principal actors Terry Jones and Michael Palin also attended. There is a popular, but incorrect, urban myth that the town had banned the film (as some authorities did) when it was first released.

 

During the aftermath storms from Cyclone Dirk on Friday 3 January 2014, the town was one of the worst hit in Wales. Properties on the adjoining promenade were then evacuated for the next five days, including 250 students from the University. Ceredigion Council appealed to the Welsh Assembly Government for funds, whilst Natural Resources Wales undertook surveys and emergency preventative measures.

 

North Parade, Aberystwyth was reported to be the most expensive street in Wales in 2018, based on property prices.

 

Penglais Nature Park (Welsh: Parc Natur Penglais) is a woodland overlooking the town. The park was created in 1995 from a disused quarry and surrounding woodland that had formerly been part of the Richardes family estate. In spring a carpet of bluebells bloom, in common with the many other bluebell woods.

 

The park covers 27 acres (11 ha). It was the first Nature reserve to open in Ceredigion and is the only UNESCO Man and Biosphere urban reserve in Wales.

 

Aberystwyth's local government administration has a two-tier structure consisting of two separate councils. As local government is a devolved matter in Wales, the legislation for both Councils is a responsibility of the Senedd.

 

Aberystwyth Town Council is the first tier of local government, which is the closest to the general public; there are 19 elected town councillors from five wards. The last elections were held in 2022. The council is responsible for cycle paths, public footpaths, CCTV, public Wi-Fi, bus shelters, parks, gardens (including the castle grounds and the skateboard park) and allotments. The council is a statutory body which is consulted regarding planning decisions in the town area and makes recommendations to the planning authority, Ceredigion County Council. The Town Council is also involved in leisure, tourism, business (through providing more than half of Menter Aberystwyth's funding in grants), licence applications, wellbeing and environmental health, recycling and refuse collection.

 

A borough council existed in Aberystwyth from 1832 and the Aberystwyth School Board was established in 1870.

 

Ceredigion County Council is another statutory body incorporated by Act of Parliament. It is the second tier of local government in the area and is a unitary authority with a wide range of powers and responsibility. The Council deals with roads (except trunk roads), street lighting, some highways, social services, children and family care, schools and public libraries. Aberystwyth elects six of the 42 councillors in five separate wards (Bronglais, Central, North and Rheidol wards elect one councillor each while Penparcau ward elects two).

 

Aberystwyth has five Senedd members, one of whom (Elin Jones) was elected as a constituency MS for Ceredigion, and four who are elected on the regional list for Mid and West Wales.

 

The town is in the Ceredigion constituency for elections to the House of Commons. Since June 2017, Aberystwyth's MP has been Plaid Cymru's Ben Lake.

 

The first ever public library in Aberystwyth was opened in Compton House, Pier Street on 13 October 1874. In 1882 the library was moved to the Assembly Rooms which were leased to the council for 21 years. The lease expired in 1903 and the library returned to Pier Street, this time to the Old Banking Library at the corner with Eastgate Street, although this was short lived. A Carnegie library was built in Aberystwyth in 1905, with a grant of £3,000. Located in Corporation Street, it was designed by the architect Walter Payton of Birmingham, who was one of 48 who entered the competition to design the building. It was formally opened on 20 April 1906 by Mrs Vaughan Davies, wife of the local MP. The town library moved to Aberystwyth Town Hall, now known as Canolfan Alun R. Edwards, following the building's refurbishment in 2012.

 

The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, is the national legal deposit library of Wales. Established in 1907, it is a Welsh Government sponsored body. According to Cyril Evans, the library's centenary events co-ordinator, "The library is considered to be one of the world's greatest libraries, and its international reputation is certainly something that all Welsh men and women are intensely ... proud of". Welsh is the main medium of communication within the organisation; it aims to deliver all public services in Welsh and English.

 

Aberystwyth Arts Centre is one of the largest and busiest arts centres in Wales. It encompasses a 312-seat theatre, 900-seat concert hall, 125-seat cinema, and has accompanied studio, galleries, plus public spaces which include cafes and a bar. Arad Goch is an Arts Council funded community theatre and art gallery based in the town. The premises holds a theatre, gallery, several art studios and meeting rooms, and a darkroom.

 

The town has three works by the Italian sculptor Mario Rutelli; the War Memorial on the promenade, the Tabernacle Chapel Memorial on Powell Street, and the statue of Edward VIII as Prince of Wales in the Old College. All are Grade II listed structures. Rutelli’s connection with the town came through Thomas Jenkins of Aberystwyth, who ran a shipping business. Jenkins was a frequent visitor to Italy where he admired Rutelli’s work. Jo Darke, in her work, The Monument Guide to England and Wales: A National Portrait in Bronze and Stone, describes Rutelli’s war memorial as “striking and rare” and suggests that the life-size statue of Edward VIII is the only recorded example.

 

Aberystwyth has a live music scene which has produced bands and artists such as: The Crocketts; The Hot Puppies; Murry the Hump; and The Lowland Hundred. The University Music Centre promotes a varied programme for instrumentalists, singers and listeners from the university and the wider community. The University chamber choir, The Elizabethan Madrigal Singers, have been singing in the town since 1950 and continue to hold a number of concerts throughout the year. Aberystwyth gives its name to a well known hymn tune composed by Joseph Parry.

 

Aberystwyth RFC is the local rugby union club and acts as a feeder club to professional side Scarlets. It was formed in 1947 and for the 2017/18 season played in the WRU Division One West. Aberystwyth Town F.C. is a semi-professional football club that was formed in 1884. The team currently compete in the Cymru Premier, Wales' top division. The town also has a cricket club which plays in local leagues, an athletics club (founded 1955), and boxing club in Penparcau. The town's golf course opened in 1911.

 

Ceredigion, the county in which Aberystwyth is located, is one of the four most Welsh-speaking counties in Wales and remained majority Welsh speaking until the 2011 census. Since the town's growth as a seaside resort in the Victorian era, it has been more anglicised than its hinterland and the rest of the county in general. The university has also attracted many English-speaking students from England, non-Welsh speaking parts of Wales and elsewhere. The 1891 census recorded that, of the 6635 inhabitants who completed the language section, 3482 (52.5%) were bilingual, 1751 (26.4%) were Welsh monoglots, and 1402 people (21.1%) were returned as English monoglots. Ceredigion (then named Cardiganshire) as a whole was 95.2% Welsh-speaking and 74.5% monoglot Welsh. Although the town remained majority Welsh-speaking for many more decades, English had already replaced Welsh in certain domains, such as entertainment and tourism. By 1961, only 50.0% of the town's population could speak Welsh, compared to 79.5% for Cardiganshire as a whole; by 1971, these numbers had fallen to 44.9% and 67.6% respectively. The 2001 census reported that, in the seven wards of Aberystwyth, 39% of the residents self-identified as able to speak or read or write Welsh. This is lower than Ceredigion as a whole (54%) but higher than Wales overall (19%).

 

Aberystwyth parish church is St Michael's and All Angels, located in Laura Place. The parish was a Rectoral Benefice until 2019, incorporating the Anglican churches of Holy Trinity, Santes Fair (services in Welsh) and Saint Anne's, Penparcau. The Rectoral Benefice has now been converted to a local ministry area (LMA). The church was built between 1886 and 1890, replacing an earlier church. It was designed in a Gothic Revival style and is a Grade II listed building.

 

In addition to the Anglican churches, there are many existing and former Welsh Calvinistic Methodist chapels that have these days merged into Saint David's (United Reformed) and Capel y Morfa (Welsh language services). A former Calvinistic Methodist Sunday school house, Ysgoldy Tanycae, is now the meeting place of the Elim Pentecostal church. Meanwhile there is a Wesleyan Methodist church, Saint Paul's Methodist Centre, located in Bath Street. An Independent Baptist church is located in Alfred Place. In 2021, amid some controversy, Aberystwyth's Catholic church, Saint Winefride's, was closed and the congregation relocated to a new-build church located in Penparcau.

 

There are a number of other smaller congregations, and many former churches that have now been converted to alternative use, such as the Academy bar.

 

Aberystwyth has two comprehensive schools serving the town and a wide rural area: Ysgol Gyfun Gymunedol Penweddig and Ysgol Penglais School. Ysgol Gyfun Gymunedol Penweddig uses Welsh as the primary language of tuition; Ysgol Penglais School teaches in English and in Welsh as a subject.

 

There are currently three primary schools within the town limits, which are: Plascrug, Saint Padarns (Roman Catholic) and Ysgol Gymraeg. Ysgol Gymraeg was the first designated Welsh medium school in Wales, originally established as a private school in 1939 by Sir Ifan ab Owen Edwards as Ysgol Gymraeg yr Urdd.

 

Aberystwyth is home to Aberystwyth University (Welsh: Prifysgol Aberystwyth) whose predecessor, University College Wales, was founded in 1872 and renamed the 'University of Wales, Aberystwyth' in the mid-1990s. Prior to the college's establishment, Wales had very limited academic-degree capability through St David's College, Lampeter (founded in 1822, now the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David).

 

As well as having two cinemas and a golf course, the town's attractions include:

The Aberystwyth Cliff Railway, a funicular railway

A Victorian camera obscura at the top of Constitution Hill.

The Vale of Rheidol steam railway (Aberystwyth to Devil's Bridge)

Aberystwyth Arts Centre.

The Parc Penglais nature reserve

The Ystwyth Trail cycle path

National Library of Wales

Park Avenue. Football stadium home to Aberystwyth Town F.C.

The all organic dairy unit of Rachel's Organic is based in Glan yr Afon, and is the largest private sector employer in Aberystwyth.

 

The Cambrian News newspaper came to Aberystwyth from Bala in 1870, after it was purchased by Sir John Gibson. Printed in Oswestry, in May 1880 the paper integrated operations in a former Malthouse in Mill Street. Owned by the Read family from 1926, in 1993 printing was contracted out, enabling the move of editorial staff to the current open-plan offices on Llanbadarn Fawr Science Park. On the death of Henry Read, the paper was purchased in 1999 by Sir Ray Tindle, whose company owns more than 200 weekly newspapers in Britain. Now printed in tabloid format, Cambrian News is the second-largest weekly-print circulation newspaper in Wales, with 24,000 copies in six regional editorial versions, read by 60,000 weekly readers. The circulation area of mid, west and north Wales covers 3,000 square miles (7,800 km2).

 

Since the TV series Hinterland has been filmed in and around Aberystwyth, the area is being promoted as an opportunity for tourists to visit filming locations; many are well publicised.

 

Aberystwyth railway station is situated in the town centre and is the terminus of the scenic Cambrian Line. Transport for Wales Rail operate a mostly hourly service (with some two-hour intervals) to Shrewsbury via Machynlleth and Mid Wales, with nearly all trains continuing to Birmingham International. Connecting services from Dovey Junction provide a link to Gwynedd's west coast as far as Pwllheli, along the Cambrian Coast Line. There is no longer a southbound connection: the Carmarthen–Aberystwyth line was closed in 1965 as part of the Beeching cuts.

 

Aberystwyth station is also the terminus of the Vale of Rheidol Railway, a steam-operated narrow gauge heritage railway. Constructed between 1901 and 1902, it was intended to ship mineral cargo, primarily lead, from Devil's Bridge down to Aberystwyth for trans-shipment. By the time it was finished, lead mining was in a deep downturn and—thanks to the Aberystwyth Improvement Company—the railway came to rely largely on the tourist industry, opening for passengers in December 1902. It still remains open for the summer season, with a journey of 12 miles (19 km).

 

In 1896, the Aberystwyth Improvement Company formed Constitution Hill Ltd which, under the direction of chief engineer George Croydon Marks, developed the United Kingdom's second longest funicular railway, the Aberystwyth Cliff Railway, which takes passengers up a 50% gradient.

 

A TrawsCymru T1 service on the A4120 in Aberystwyth

Aberystwyth is a hub for the TrawsCymru bus network, with four routes serving the town:

 

T1 - hourly service to Carmarthen (connects with T1S to Swansea, Monday-Saturday) via Aberaeron and Lampeter - with one service a day (Monday-Saturday) extended to Cardiff

T1C - daily express coach service to Cardiff, via Aberaeron, Carmarthen (connects with T1S to Swansea, Monday-Saturday), Swansea (Sunday & Bank Holidays only), Port Talbot Parkway and Bridgend

T2 - every 1–2 hours to Bangor via Machynlleth, Dolgellau (connects with T3 to Barmouth and Wrexham), Porthmadog and Caernarfon

T5 - hourly service to Haverfordwest via Aberaeron, New Quay, Cardigan and Fishguard

(TrawsCymru services run less-frequently on Sundays.)

 

There is a daily National Express coach, service 409 to London via Birmingham, along with local bus services within the town and into the surrounding area.

 

The A44 and A487 meet with much traffic between North Wales and South West Wales passing through the town. The A4120 links the A44 and A487 between Llanbadarn Fawr and Penparcau, allowing through traffic to bypass the town centre.

 

The B4574 mountain road linking the town to Rhayader is described by the AA as one of the ten most scenic drives in the world.

 

The port of Aberystwyth, although it is small and relatively inconsequential today, used to be an important Atlantic Ocean entryway. It was used to ship locally, to Ireland and as a transatlantic departure point. Commercially, the once important Cardiganshire lead mines exported from this location.

 

The importance of maritime trade in the 19th century is reflected in the fact that a lifeboat has been based at Aberystwyth since 1843, when a 27 ft (8.2 m) boat powered by six oars was funded by public subscription and placed under the control of the harbourmaster. The RNLI took over the service in 1861 and established Aberystwyth Lifeboat Station which celebrated 150 years in 2011. The station uses the Atlantic 85-class inshore lifeboat Spirit of Friendship.

 

The Owl Service by Alan Garner, a well-known and -loved multi-award-winning classic published 1967, is set in north Wales and has two of its core characters —Gwyn and his mam (mother) Nancy— recently arrived from Aberystwyth for 3 weeks' work, with Nancy repeatedly threatening to return there immediately. They and the Welsh locals refer to it as "Aber"; the English characters use its full name.

Aberystwyth (albeit an alternative universe version) is the setting for the cult Louie Knight series by Malcolm Pryce, which transfers Chandleresque "noir" stories and dialogue to this small seaside town. This alternative reality features many landmarks of Aberystwyth, such as the University and the National Library of Wales, but the social situation is radically altered to more closely resemble the pulp/noir stereotypical "Dirty Town" that the narrative plays off. Most of the humour in the books is derived from the almost seamless juxtaposition of the real Aberystwyth and the fictional, noir Aberystwyth. Various aspects of Welsh culture are reflections of what you might expect to see in reality, but with a pulp twist – for example, prostitutes wear Welsh stovepipe hats.

Stripping Penguins Bare, the book 2 of Michael Carson's Benson Trilogy of comic novels, is set in the town and university in the 1960s.

The local writer Niall Griffiths has set many of his novels here and reflects local slang, settings, and even individuals. Grits and Sheepshagger are set wholly in Aberystwyth, which also features prominently in his other novels such as Kelly and Victor and Stump. He portrays a more gritty side of Aberystwyth.

‘Cofiwch Aberystwyth’ by science fiction writer Val Nolan, is a near-future post-apocalyptic novelette about three young urban explorers visiting Aberystwyth years after a nuclear disaster on the west coast of Wales. It was originally published in Interzone (magazine) and later anthologised in Best of British Science Fiction 2020. The title references the Cofiwch Dryweryn graffiti outside nearby Llanrhystyd, Ceredigion.

 

Television

Y Gwyll (2013–2016), a Welsh-language television programme, and the English-language version Hinterland , broadcast on S4C, BBC One Wales, BBC Four, and syndicated around the world, is set in Aberystwyth. It is filmed in and around the town, often in rural locations.

 

Film

Y Llyfrgell (2017) is an award-winning Welsh language film set in and around the National Library, which was filmed on location in 2016. The 2009 book on which it was based was released in English in 2022.

 

The following people and military units have received the Freedom of the Town of Aberystwyth.

Individuals

1912 – Sir John Williams

1912 – David Davies

1912 – Stuart Rendel

1922 – David Lloyd George

1923 – Lewis Pugh Evans

1923 – Matthew Vaughan-Davies

1923 – Sir Herbert Lewis

1928 – Stanley Baldwin

1936 – Sir David Charles Roberts

1936 – Ernest Vaughan

1951 – Winston Churchill

1956 – Sir David James

2011 – Fritz Pratschke

2015 – Jean Guezennec

 

Military Units

1955 – The Welsh Guards

 

Twinning

Arklow in Wicklow, Republic of Ireland Ireland

Kronberg im Taunus in Hesse Hesse, Germany Germany

Saint-Brieuc in Brittany Brittany, France France

Esquel in Patagonia, Argentina Argentina

Charleston est. 1670, pop. 127,999 (2013) • French Quarter

 

• alley leading to Pirates Courtyard

 

• Huguenot merchant Alexander Peronneau (1709-1774) built this 2½ story double tenement, probably after the fire of 1740 • considered one of the 10 wealthiest persons in British America • his French immigrant father, Henry Peronneau (1667-1743), was frequently cited as the richest man in the colonies

 

• Peronneau Tenements among Charleston's earliest town houses • 2 rooms deep • largely constructed of Bermuda stone, a coquina rock imported from the Caribbean • c. 1920 photos -Historic Charleston Foundation

 

• by the 1920s, Charleston had a preservation movement founded by the city's 1st female realtor, Susan (Sue) Pringle Frost (1878-1960), aka The Angel of Tradd Street • Frost bio -S.C. Encyclopedia

 

• No. 143-145 purchased by Blanche Salley Rhett (1876-1942), wife of former Charleston mayor R. Goodwyn Rhett • contracted African-American builder Thomas Mayhem Pinckney (1871-1952) to restore & convert the bldg. to a single residence • became known as "Pirate House" echoing a popular but baseless urban legend that claimed it had housed pirates who built tunnels to the waterfront to evade British taxes &/or smuggle illicit imports • shutters & Neoclassical Revival style door surrounds added during restoration -Roots & Recall

 

• Pinckney, son of cabinet maker Nathaniel Pinckney, was a stairmaker also trained in Charleston masonry traditions • construction workers in northern states were mainly white immigrants, but in the South this work was done by blacks, both pre- and post-emancipation • preservationist Frost relied heavily on him for restoration/recreation/"recliaming" of historic properties, referring to him as her "right hand man"

 

• Pinckney founded a contracting firm specializing in historic structures, employed & trained numerous African-Americans in building arts • Preservation Society of Charleston's Thomas Mayhem Pinckney Alliance is an advocacy committee that supports the society in identifying & preserving African-American material & cultural heritage • Turning Shambles into Showcases -Alissa Clare Keller

 

"I have often been given credit for the work I did in restoring the old time architecture. But more credit should be given to Thomas M. Pinckney. He was a real artist in his work of restoration of the old time woodcarvings in our splendid old homes." -Susan Pringle Frost, "News & Courier," Dec., 1952

 

HABS SC-164< • French Quarter Historic District, National Register 73001682, 1973 • Charleston Historic District, National Register # 66000964, 1969 • declared National Historic Landmark District, 1973

Charleston est. 1670, pop. 127,999 (2013) • French Quarter

 

• Huguenot merchant Alexander Peronneau (1709-1774) built this 2½ story double tenement, probably after the fire of 1740 • considered one of the 10 wealthiest persons in British America • his French immigrant father, Henry Peronneau (1667-1743), was frequently cited as the richest man in the colonies

 

• Peronneau Tenements among Charleston's earliest town houses • 2 rooms deep • largely constructed of Bermuda stone, a coquina rock imported from the Caribbean • c. 1920 photos -Historic Charleston Foundation

 

• by the 1920s, Charleston had a preservation movement founded by the city's 1st female realtor, Susan (Sue) Pringle Frost (1878-1960), aka The Angel of Tradd Street • Frost bio -S.C. Encyclopedia

 

• No. 143-145 purchased by Blanche Salley Rhett (1876-1942), wife of former Charleston mayor R. Goodwyn Rhett • contracted African-American builder Thomas Mayhem Pinckney (1871-1952) to restore & convert the bldg. to a single residence • became known as "Pirate House" echoing a popular but baseless urban legend that claimed it had housed pirates who built tunnels to the waterfront to evade British taxes &/or smuggle illicit imports • shutters & Neoclassical Revival style door surrounds added during restoration -Roots & Recall

 

• Pinckney, son of cabinet maker Nathaniel Pinckney, was a stairmaker also trained in Charleston masonry traditions • construction workers in northern states were mainly white immigrants, but in the South this work was done by blacks, both pre- and post-emancipation • preservationist Frost relied heavily on him for restoration/recreation/"recliaming" of historic properties, referring to him as her "right hand man"

 

• Pinckney founded a contracting firm specializing in historic structures, employed & trained numerous African-Americans in building arts • Preservation Society of Charleston's Thomas Mayhem Pinckney Alliance is an advocacy committee that supports the society in identifying & preserving African-American material & cultural heritage • Turning Shambles into Showcases -Alissa Clare Keller

 

"I have often been given credit for the work I did in restoring the old time architecture. But more credit should be given to Thomas M. Pinckney. He was a real artist in his work of restoration of the old time woodcarvings in our splendid old homes." -Susan Pringle Frost, "News & Courier," Dec., 1952

 

HABS SC-164< • French Quarter Historic District, National Register 73001682, 1973 • Charleston Historic District, National Register # 66000964, 1969 • declared National Historic Landmark District, 1973

16th century with later alterations. 5-storey block with gabled dormers fronting Lawnmarket, and 2 wings extending to rear; 2-window gabled bay over broad segmental-arched pend (Brodie's Close). Now contains a popular café.

 

Entrance to the former mansion of the infamous William or Deacon Brodie (now demolished). Brodie was a renowned cabinet maker, deacon of a trades guild and city councillor, who maintained a secret life as a housebreaker to fund his gambling habit and mistresses. Part of his work as a cabinetmaker was to install and repair locks and other security mechanisms. He would copy their keys using wax impressions. He was eventually captured and hanged in the High Street in 1788 in front of a large crowd.

 

It is also thought Deacon Brodie was the inspiration to Edinburgh novelist Robert Louis Stevenson to write his novella The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.

From left to right: CDV’s of unidentified subjects.

 

1) CDV by D.N. Moore, Ellsworth, Missouri. Darwin N. Moore was born in May 1839, the son of Nathaniel and Susan Moore. In 1860, Darwin was living with his wife, Statira (born circa 1843) in Ellsworth, Missouri; Darwin was a merchant with a personal estate of $2,000. When he enrolled for the 1863 draft, he listed his occupation as cabinet maker, but in that same year he paid $10.00 for a Class B license as a photographer in Ellsworth. Still in Ellsworth for the 1870 census, Darwin was still a photographer with a personal estate of $1,000; Darwin and Statira had a daughter, Minnie Moore. By 1880, Darwin had abandoned photography in favor of being a house carpenter in Ellsworth, a career that he would list in the 1900 census. On 7 January 1908, Darwin N. Moore died of pneumonia in Ellsworth.

 

2) CDV by Draper, 1313 & 1315 Columbia Avenue, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Edmund Draper was born in Philadelphia on 26 November 1835, the son of Edmund Draper (1805-1882) and Elizabeth (last name unknown, born circa 1814). The father, Edmund Draper, was an accomplished maker of surveying instruments, and his compasses remain highly valued. In 1850, Edmund was living with his parents and two siblings in Philadelphia. On 19 March 1857, he married Catherine Christina Tucker (born on 3 March 1836) and the couple would have at least four children. When Edmund began his photography career is not known, but in 1862 he paid for a Class B license as a photographer making over $500 a year. Edmund remained in Philadelphia working as a photographer until circa 1891. From around 1867 through 1877, he was in partnership with Joseph Husted. Edmund and Catherine relocated to Delaware, and in the 1900 census they were living in Wilmington; Edmund still listed his occupation as photographer. Edmund Draper passed away on 15 April 1910.

 

3) CDV by C.A. Stevens, Waltham, Massachusetts. Caleb Alton Stevens was born in June 1831 in Maine, the son of Paul Thomas Stevens (1800-1889) and Maria H. Brackett (1802-1843). In 1850, Caleb was living in Westbrook, Maine with the Brackett family, and he listed his occupation as trader. On 21 January 1853, he married Catherine S. Richardson (1835-1895) and the couple would have at least two daughters. In 1860, the family was living in Falmouth, Maine and Caleb was a shoemaker; the family had $150 in real estate and a personal estate of $100. In 1862, in Portland, Maine, Caleb paid for a Class B license as a photographer making less than $500 a year. In 1863, his studio in Portland was located at 12 1/2 Market Square. No later than 1870, Caleb and the family had relocated to Waltham, Massachusetts, where he worked as a photographer for H.F. Warren. In the 1870‘s, Warren became a florist and photographer, and then just a florist. It seems that Stevens took over Warren’s studio and he continued to work as a Waltham photographer until at least 1880, when his studio was located in Whitford’s Building. He also had a studio in Foxboro in the 1887-1892 period, and then in Boston. In the 1900 census, he was living in Boston, was a widower, and still a photographer. Caleb A. Stevens passed away on 25 February 1901.

 

4) CDV by T.R. Lewis, Prentiss Block, Main Street, Holyoke, Massachusetts. Thomas R. Lewis was born in August 1845 in Massachusetts, the son of William Lewis and Betsey Goldthwait. From 1860 through at least 1865, Thomas lived with his parents in Salem, Massachusetts. On 18 July 1872 he married Martha Moulton (born circa 1848). By 1879, Thomas had a studio at 60 Main Street, Holyoke, Massachusetts. In the 1880 census, he was a lodger in Stoneham, Middlesex, Mass., and was a photographer. After Martha passed way, Thomas remarried on 8 September, 1887 to Lucy E. Berry. In 1900, he was working as a photographer in Amesburg, Essex County, Mass.; he was listed as married, but no wife was listed. Thomas R. Lewis died of stroke on 31 May 1901.

 

5) CDV by Gay’s Gallery of Art, Corner Main and Borden Streets, Fall River, Massachusetts. Edwin F. Gay was born 2 February 1837 in Canada. In 1850, he was working in a cotton mill in Holyoke, Massachusetts, and was living with his brother. By 1861, he was listed as a jeweler in Fall River, Massachusetts. On 5 November 1863, he married Emily Victoria Borden (1840-1937). By 1865, he was a photographer in Fall River. He was very successful and in the 1870 census the couple had real estate of $4,000 and a personal estate of $1,500; Emily was doing “picture ink work” in Edwin’s studio. Edwin Gay passed away on 6 April 1879 and Emily took over running the studio. At some point the studio was relocated to a building owned by Andrew Borden; I did not find what Emily’s relationship was to that more well-known side of the Borden family. By 1910, Emily had retired and the studio was being run by her daughter, Winona Gay.

SIXTY-ONE/100

www.flickr.com/groups/100strangers/pool/

 

Meet John Hughes, Kora Player and Percussionist who creates JOYFUL Music for ALL Occasions!

 

As I was dining at the Brattleboro Food Co-Op in Vermont,

this phenomenal musician was playing the most melodious tunes on a beautiful instrument he had made himself. I didn't talk a lot with John, as I wanted to just listen to his peaceful music.

 

PLEASE visit his website for the most interesting introduction to John and his many gifts and talents.

 

From an excerpt, I learned

 

"He is an artist and craftsman with a master's degree in sculpture, which he's taught, along with 3-D design and drawing in universities across the country. He's also worked professionally as a blacksmith, cabinet maker, furniture maker and carpenter.

 

He is an innovative composer, kora player, percussionist and vocalist whose style ranges from elegant and stately West African classical harp music to jazzy, hypnotic grooves that cross cultural boundaries and fuse disparate influences.

 

Playing ancient traditional instruments (not often heard in the United States), many of which he builds himself, John takes his audience on an intimate tour of universally musical expressions of joy and hope, at once soothing and up-lifting.

 

Simply put, he has years of experience making things that are beautiful and elegantly functional."

 

Please take a moment to visit him on his website, and click on the video below for an amazing taste of his gentle spirit.

 

JOHN HUGHES

 

*another note from John's fascinating website: The kora is an ancient (nearly a thousand years old) West African harp not often heard in the United States. It's resinating chamber is made from a very large gourd covered with a stretched hide sound board. It has 22 nylon strings in two separate rows that span 4 octaves.

 

Coachwork by Saoutchik

 

Majestic.

Iakov Savtchuk from Minsk had enough of hearing his name mispronounced with a hint of suspicion, and changed it to the more easily-pronounceable Jacques Saoutchik. He was a cabinet maker in Sureness who made frames for the coach builders to which they attached their fabrics. The next logical step for this gifted sub-contractor was to branch out on his own, which he did by setting up in Neuilly.

 

11.300 cc

V12

 

French Coachwork Masterpieces (Pre-War) Open Cars

 

Chantilly Arts & Elegance Richard Mille

Château de Chantilly

Chantilly

France - Frankrijk

September 2016

On June 23, 2019, The Madison Historical Society's 6th Annual Tour of Remarkable Homes of 5 unique Madison Properties was held from 11 to 4. See flic.kr/s/aHsmDYR4zd for more scenes from this event.

Built on a corner lot, the charming early-19th-century yellow colonial with black shutters is known as the Zenas Wilcox House. Visitors enter the home through a mudroom and eat-in kitchen that were added in the mid-1980s.

The current owner, wanting the new spaces to flow with the antique character of the house, used beams from an Ohio barn to support the addition’s vaulted ceiling. She used reclaimed chestnut boards from a Connecticut farmhouse to create its floor. The cover of a book of family recipes, published by the owner’s grandmother, inspired a brick surround that houses a stove that divides the space. The custom kitchen was built by local cabinet maker Thomas Korn. Much forethought and attention to detail was given to the design and use of the space. The detail of his artistry is apparent everywhere, as seen in the small cabinet above the poured-concrete counters; a stowaway space for small appliances, it features a lovely reticulated pull-down shelf lined with tin.

The dining room was completely reimagined by the owner to reflect the home’s historic past. Again, Korn worked his magic. He installed a Federal-style corner cabinet that houses a collection of antique porcelain, and he made raised-panel floating millwork, painted in a traditional grey/blue. The property is situated across from a horse pond where locals enjoying frogging in the warmer months and ice skating in the winter. Located on just over an acre of land, the home also features a heated pool, a sunroom, and a porch that utilizes stone repurposed from an earlier foundation.

(Photo credit Bob Gundersen www.flickr.com/photos/bobphoto51/albums)

Through a literal hole in the wall of a building in Havana.

she was little when we first moved here 17 years ago.

  

she was born deep in the woods in the foothills of these mountains into the arms of her parents before the midwife arrived.

 

she has been a baby-whisperer always, even as a very little girl, babysitting up to 6 littles at a time as if it were a breeze. they all adore her.

 

she had her solo pilot's license by the age of 18.

 

she has worked as a cabinet-maker and builder in her dad's shop.

 

she is quickly becoming an talented seamstress like the women in her family before her.

 

she was working her way through nursing school.

 

she is having a baby soon.

 

she is making the choice to be a stay at home mom.

 

she is still only in her early 20s.

 

this young woman and soon-mama-to-be can do any thing she sets her mind to.

 

she's going to be an amazing mama.

The Grade II Listed 12 & 13 Steep Hill which were built together around 1700, in Lincoln, Lincolnshire.

 

12 Steep Hill was built as a house, the downstairs is now used by Bonbon Bouche cake shop and above it a flat. In the 1901 census it was used by cabinet maker, J Everitt.

 

13 Steep Hill was also built as a house. In 1883 it was used by Williams toy dealer; 1893 G Scannall piano tuner; 1901 A E Syson, furniture dealer; 1975, A E Syson antique furniture shop; 1990s-2013 Readers Rest bookshop. The core of the house is possibly 13th-century.

 

Steep Hill consists of independent shops, tea rooms and pub and in 2011, Steep Hill was named "Britain's Best Place" by the Academy of Urbanism. The central (and steepest) part of the route is unsuited to any form of vehicle, and only passable on foot. A handrail is provided along this section.

 

Steep Hill along with Strait was created when the line of Ermine Street was diverted to the east in the 11th century. The route is part of the Roman route from the ford over the River Witham to the Forum in modern Bailgate, and thus the final part of Ermine Street. The name is an 18th century creation. Previously named after the poultry market, The Poultry (14th century), Polther Hill and the Pultry (16th century). John Speeds original 1607 survey plan names it Bore Hill.

 

Business is now closed.

This is a reconstruction of the carpentry shop at London Town that was owned by William Brown. The shop is constructed using 18th century techniques and includes the use of rose head nails and leaded glass windows. The shop is reconstructed on the site identified through archaeological research.

 

From the Londontown. org site:

William Brown was involved with London Town from at least the late 1740s through his

death in the early 1790s.1

During that time he was called carpenter, cabinet-maker, joiner,

sawyer, undertaker, tavern keeper, and ferry keeper. He was influential enough to have large

amounts of credit extended to him and respected to safeguard the provincial records at the

beginning to the American Revolution. And he was unfortunate enough to eventually go

bankrupt and die in Annapolis a very poor individual.

 

www.historiclondontown.org/people-of-london-town

William Brodie (28 September 1741 – 1 October 1788), more commonly known by his prestigious title of Deacon Brodie, was a Scottish cabinet-maker, deacon of a trades guild and Edinburgh city councillor, who maintained a secret life as a burglar, partly for the thrill, and partly to fund his gambling.

 

By day, Brodie was a respectable tradesman and Deacon (president) of the Incorporation of Wrights, the head of the Craft of Cabinetmaking, which made him a member of the Town Council. Part of his job in building cabinets was to install and repair their locks and other security mechanisms and repair door locks. He socialised with the gentry of Edinburgh, and met the poet Robert Burns and the painter Sir Henry Raeburn. He was also a member of The Edinburgh Cape Club[1], and known as Sir Llyud.

 

At night, however, Brodie became a burglar and thief. He used his daytime job as a way to gain knowledge about the security mechanisms of his clients and to copy their keys using wax impressions. As the foremost wright of the city, Brodie was asked to work in the homes of many of the richest members of Edinburgh society. He used the illicit money to maintain his second life, which included a gambling habit and five children to two mistresses.

 

Brodie somehow managed to prevent his wife from discovering the existence of his mistresses, or his mistresses from discovering the existence of each other.

 

He reputedly began his criminal career around 1768 when he copied keys to a bank door and stole £800. In 1786 he recruited a gang of three thieves, John Brown (a thief escaping a seven-year sentence of transportation), George Smith (a locksmith, who ran a grocer's shop in the Cowgate) and Andrew Ainslie (a shoemaker).

Vintage postcard, no. 2022.

 

Dorothy Dandridge (1922-1965) was an American film and theatre actress, singer and dancer. She is perhaps best known for being the first African-American actress to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Carmen Jones (Otto Preminger, 1954). She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959). Dandridge also appeared in a few European films.

 

Dorothy Jean Dandridge was born in, 1922 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Ruby Dandridge (née Ruby Jean Butler), an entertainer, and Cyril H. Dandridge, a cabinet maker and minister. Under the prodding of her mother, Dorothy and her sister Vivian Dandridge began performing publicly, as the Wonder Children, later The Dandridge Sisters, usually in black Baptist churches throughout the country. Her mother would often join her daughters on stage. During her early career, she appeared in a succession of films, usually in uncredited roles. Her film debut was a bit role in the Marx Brothers comedy, A Day at the Races (Sam Wood, 1937). She also performed as a vocalist in the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater. Her breakthrough was her title role in the all-black production of Carmen Jones (Otto Preminger, 1954). Dandridge's performance as the sultry title character made her one of Hollywood's first African-American sex symbol. Carmen Jones became a worldwide success, eventually earning over $10 million at the box office and becoming one of the year's highest-earning films.

 

In 1957, after a three-year absence from film acting, Dorothy Dandridge agreed to appear in the film version of Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957), opposite an ensemble cast, including James Mason, Harry Belafonte, Joan Fontaine, Joan Collins, and Stephen Boyd. The film was controversial for its time period, and the script was revised numerous times to accommodate the Production Code requirements about interracial relationships. There occurred, however, an extremely intimate loving embrace between Dandridge and Justin that succeeded in not breaching the code. Despite the behind-the-scenes controversy and unfavorable critical reviews, the film was one of the year's biggest successes. Dandridge next starred opposite Curd Jürgens in the Italian production of Tamango. A reluctant Dandridge had agreed to appear in the film only after learning that it focused on a nineteenth century slave revolt on a cargo ship travelling from Africa to Cuba. However, she nearly withdrew her involvement when the initial script called for her to swim in the nude and spend the majority of the film in a two-piece bathing suit made of rags. When Dandridge threatened to leave the film, the script and her wardrobe was retooled to her liking. In 1959, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959). However, when the film was released, it was critically bashed and failed to recoup its financial investment.

 

Dorothy Dandridge next filmed a low-budget British thriller Malaga (László Benedek, 1960) in which she played a European woman with an Italian name. The film, co-starring Trevor Howard and Edmund Purdom, plotted a jewel robbery and its aftermath. Howard and Dandridge created some strongly understated sexual tension in the film. Malanga was withheld from a theatrical release abroad until 1960, but went unreleased in the United States until 1962. It was her final completed film appearance. Dandridge was married and divorced twice. From 1942 till 1951, she was married to dancer and entertainer Harold Nicholas Harold Nicholas. They had a daughter, Harolyn Suzanne Nicholas, who was born brain-damaged. In 1959 she married hotel owner Jack Denison. They divorced in 1962 amid financial setbacks and allegations of domestic violence. At this time, Dandridge discovered that the people who were handling her finances had swindled her out of $150,000 and that she was $139,000 in debt for back taxes. In 1965, Dorothy Dandridge died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 42. She is the subject of the HBO biographical film, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (Martha Coolidge, 1999) with Halle Berry.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

Imperial fishing lodge

Alexander III of Russia (who ruled the Grand Duchy of Finland as part of the Russian Empire) had a very small manor or a medium sized log house built there, between the branches of the Kymi river. He would take relatively rustic vacations there, along with his family. His wife the empress Marie Feodorovna (née Dagmar of Denmark) enjoyed cooking while he fished or split wood. The log house is now a museum.

 

Alexander III, and Dagmar had heard about the good salmon fishing at Langinkoski, so in the summer of 1880 they arrived at Langinkoski to watch the salmon fishing. They also took a liking to the beautiful river scenery and promised to return.

 

Some years later they did return to Langinkoski. They said that they would like to have a little fishing hut on the banks of the river.

 

The senate of the Grand Duchy of Finland took measures to have a villa built for the sovereign and his family on the very banks of the Langinkoski rapids. The lodge was designed by architect Magnus Schjerfbeck and the interior decorating was planned by architect Jac. Ahrenberg.

 

The construction of the lodge was begun in the summer of 1888. The imperial couple were so interested in their summer house in Finland that they came to watch the progress of the project. Along with them came their youngest children, grand duke Michael, 10, and grand duchess Olga, 6. The interior decorating of the lodge was almost totally designed and manufactured in Finland.

 

The pieces of furniture in the sitting room were manufactured by local cabinet-makers, the textiles by Tampella in Tampere, the chinaware by Arabia in Helsinki, the axe by Billnäs, the wine and drinking glasses by Karhula Glassworks and the kitchen stove by Högfors; all well-known firms which still exist.

 

At their Langinkoski lodge the imperial family led a very simple life. The emperor was very fond of children and he took his youngest children for outings in the surroundings. The members of the imperial family used simple clothing and had uncomplicated food to eat.

 

Empress Marie Feodorovna knew how to cook and at Langinkoski she had an opportunity of devoting herself to that hobby. It is known also that she did not like washing the dishes.

 

Located at the end of a sleepy little cul-de-sac in the leafy north east Melburnian suburb of Fairy Hills is a beautiful pebbledash Arts and Crafts style bungalow. Quiet and unassuming amid its well kept gardens, this bungalow is quite significant historically as it is the creation and home of nationally renowned husband and wife artists Christian and Napier Waller, and is known as the Waller House. Together they designed the house and much of its interior decoration and furnishings. Napier Waller lived in their purpose designed home for some fifty years. What is especially significant about the house is that both it and its contents are quite intact. Napier Waller's studios, examples of his art, that of his two wives and his niece, famous studio potter Klytie Pate, and items connected with his work remain exactly as he left them. Architecturally the house design is innovative in its internal use of space, specifically in the organisation of the studio cum living room and displays a high degree of artistic creativity in the interior decoration.

 

The Waller House in Fairy Hills is so named because it was the residence of Mervyn Napier Waller, the acclaimed artist who gained National fame from his water colours, stained glass, mosaic works and murals and his wife Christian, who was a distinguished artist and designer of stained glass in her own right. In particular Napier Waller's works adorn the Melbourne Town Hall, the Myer Emporium Mural Hall, the Victorian State Library and the Australian War Memorial. The Waller House is a split level house designed by Napier and his first wife Christian who intended the house to be both a home and a workplace. For this the design was conceived to accommodate the tall studies and pieces of the artist's work.

 

The Waller house was built by Phillip Millsom in 1922 and the architectural style of the house is a mixture of Interwar Arts and Crafts, Interwar Old English and Interwar California Bungalow. The house is constructed from reinforced concrete walls with a rough cast pebbledash finish. The roof is steeply pitched with a prominent half timbered gable over the front entrance and has Marseilles pattern terracotta tiles. There are small paned casement windows. There have been several additions to the original design over the years but these have all been sympathetic to the original design.

 

The house is entered from a two sided verandah into an entrance hall, panelled in Tasmanian wood. This has stairs leading to the different levels of the house interior. In one direction the hall leads to a main living hall which was Napier Waller's original studio and later used as the main living room in the house. This room has a high ceiling with casement windows, a musicians’ gallery and a broad brick fireplace flanked by fire-dogs and bellows made by the sculptress Ola Cohn (1892 – 1964). Like many of the other rooms in the house the studio is panelled and floored with Tasmanian hardwood and contains some of the studies for Napier Waller's murals: “The Five Lamps of Learning; the Wise and Foolish Virgins” a mosaic for the University of Western Australia and, “Peace After Victory” a study painting for the State Library of Victoria. Above the panelling the plaster walls are painted in muted colours in wood grain effect. The raftered plaster ceiling has been painted in marble effect with gold leaf. Book shelves, still containing the Wallers’ beautiful books, are built into the panelled walls. Furniture in the room includes a settee with a painted back panel featuring jousting knights, painted by Christian Waller, a leather suite and black bean sideboards and cupboards. This furniture was designed in the nineteen thirties by Napier Waller and by Percy Meldrum and a noted cabinet maker called Goulman. The studio cum hall also contains many ceramic works created by studio potter Klytie Pate who was Christian Waller’s niece and protégée. The entrance hall leads in the other direction to a guest room, known as the “Blue Room”. This was the idea of Napier's wife Christian and has simple built-in glass topped furniture and Napier's murals of the “Labours of Hercules” which include a self portrait of the artist. An alcove section of the room was constructed out of an extension to the verandah. Stairs lead from the entrance hall to the musicians’ gallery which has a window and overlooks the studio cum living room. The kitchen near the studio/hall is panelled and raftered with built-in cupboards conforming to the panelling. The ceiling is stencilled in a fleur-de-lys design by Napier. The dining room lies to the right of the studio cum hall and contains shoulder high panelling and raftered ceilings. It has an angled brick corner fireplace and the walls and ceiling have the same painted treatment as the studio cum living room. The oak dining furniture was designed by Napier. A small den with high window, furnished with leather chairs, opens off the dining room. Opening off the hall to the left is a long rectangular room known as the glass studio. This was added to the house by builder C. Trinck of Hampton in about 1931 and contains Napier Waller's kiln, paintbrushes and stained-glass tools on the benches, and stained glass designs and racks which are still stacked with radiant streaked glass from his work with stained glass windows. A bedroom and bathroom with attic pitched rafter ceiling and casement windows is situated on the upper level of the house. Another bedroom in ship's cabin style with flared wall light fittings and built in bunks opens off this first bedroom.

 

The house backs onto a courtyard enclosed by a long bluestone garden wall. The house is set in a three and a half acre site with cypress hedges and gravelled paths. The garden drops away to a hillside slope with manna gum trees. Set on the slope is a flat roofed studio built in 1937. It has an undercroft beneath a studio room and this contains a lithographic press and a printing press of 1849 for woodcuts and linocuts. This was used by Napier and his first wife Christian to produce prints in the 1930s. Napier was widowed and married his stained glass studio assistant Lorna Reyburn in 1958.

 

The Waller House has recently become famous for yet another reason. The exterior has been used as a backdrop in the ABC/ITV co-production television series, “The Doctor Blake Mysteries” (2013). The house serves as the residence of the program’s lead character, Doctor Lucien Blake (played by Australian actor Craig McLachlan), and the doctor’s 1930s tourer is often seen driving up to or away from the Waller House throughout the series. The Waller House is the only regular backdrop not filmed in the provincial Victorian gold rush city of Ballarat, in which the series is based.

 

The Waller House is still a private residence, even though it was bequeathed to the people of Victoria by Napier Waller under the proviso that it would not revert to state ownership until after the death of his second wife, Lorna. The current leasee of the Waller House is a well known Melbourne antique dealer, who was friends with Lorna Reyburn, and who acts as a loving informal caretaker. He was approached by the Napier Waller Committee of Management and keeps the house neat and tidy, and maintains the garden beautifully. I am very grateful to him for his willingness to open the Waller House, and for allowing me the opportunity to comprehensively photograph this rarely seen gem of Melbourne art, architecture and history.

 

Mervyn Napier Waller (1893 – 1972) was an Australian artist. Born in Penshurst, Victoria, Napier was the son of William Waller, contractor, and his wife Sarah, née Napier. Educated locally until aged 14, he then worked on his father's farm. In 1913 he began studies at the National Gallery schools, Melbourne, and first exhibited water-colours and drawings at the Victorian Artists' Society in 1915. On 31 August of that year he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, and on 21 October at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, married Christian Yandell, a fellow student and artist from Castlemaine. Serving in France from the end of 1916, Waller was seriously wounded in action, and his right arm had to be amputated at the shoulder. Whilst convalescing in France and England Napier learned to write and draw with his left hand. After coming home to Australia he exhibited a series of war sketches in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart between 1918 and 1919 which helped to establish his reputation as a talented artist. Napier continued to paint in water-colour, taking his subjects from mythology and classical legend, but exhibited a group of linocuts in 1923. In 1927 Napier completed his first major mural for the Menzies Hotel, Melbourne. Next year his mural 'Peace after Victory' was installed in the State Library of Victoria. Visiting England and Europe in 1929 to study stained glass, the Wallers travelled in Italy where Napier was deeply impressed by the mosaics in Ravenna and studied mosaic in Venice. He returned to Melbourne in March 1930 and began to work almost exclusively in stained glass and mosaic. In 1931 he completed a great monumental mosaic for the University of Western Australia; two important commissions in Melbourne followed: the mosaic façade for Newspaper House (completed 1933) and murals for the dining hall in the Myer Emporium (completed 1935). During this time he also worked on a number of stained-glass commissions, some in collaboration with his wife, Christian. Between 1939 and 1945 he worked as an illustrator and undertook no major commissions. In 1946 he finished a three-lancet window commemorating the New Guinea martyrs for St Peter's Church, Eastern Hill. In 1952-58 he designed and completed the mosaics and stained glass for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. On 25 January 1958 in a civil ceremony in Melbourne Waller had married Lorna Marion Reyburn, a New Zealand-born artist who had long been his assistant in stained glass.

 

Christian Waller (1894 – 1954) was an Australian artist. Born in Castlemaine, Victoria, Christian was the fifth daughter and youngest of seven children of William Edward Yandell a Victorian-born plasterer, and his wife Emily, née James, who came from England. Christian began her art studies in 1905 under Carl Steiner at the Castlemaine School of Mines. The family moved in 1910 to Melbourne where Christian attended the National Gallery schools. She studied under Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall, won several student prizes, exhibited (1913-22) with the Victorian Artists Society and illustrated publications. On 21 October 1915 at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, she married her former fellow-student Mervyn Napier Waller; they were childless, but adopted Christian’s niece Klytie Pate, in all but a legal sense. During the 1920s Christian Waller became a leading book illustrator, winning acclaim as the first Australian artist to illustrate Alice in Wonderland (1924). Her work reflected Classical, Medieval, Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau influences. She also produced woodcuts and linocuts, including fine bookplates. From about 1928 she designed stained-glass windows. The Wallers travelled to London in 1929 to investigate the manufacture of stained glass at Whall & Whall Ltd's premises. Returning to Australia via Italy, they studied the mosaics at Ravenna and Venice. Christian signed and exhibited her work under her maiden name until 1930, but thereafter used her married name. In the 1930s Waller produced her finest prints, book designs and stained glass, her work being more Art Deco in style and showing her interest in theosophy. She created stained-glass windows for a number of churches—especially for those designed by Louis Williams—in Melbourne, Geelong, and rural centres in New South Wales. Sometimes she collaborated with her husband, both being recognized as among Australia's leading stained-glass artists. Estranged from Napier, Christian went to New York in 1939. In 1940 she returned to the home she shared with her husband in Fairy Hills where she immersed herself in her work and became increasingly reclusive. In 1942 she painted a large mural for Christ Church, Geelong; by 1948 she had completed more than fifty stained-glass windows.

 

Klytie Pate (1912 – 2010) was an Australian Studio Potter who emerged as an innovator in the use of unusual glazes and the extensive incising, piercing and ornamentation of earthenware pottery. She was one of a small group of Melbourne art potters which included Marguerite Mahood and Reg Preston who were pioneers in the 1930‘s of ceramic art nationwide. Her early work was strongly influenced by her aunt, the artist and printmaker, Christian Waller. Klytie’s father remarried when she was 13, so Klytie went to live with her aunt, Christian Waller. Christian and her husband Napier Waller encouraged her interest in art and printmaking. She spent time at their studio in Fairy Hills, and thus her work reflected Art Deco, Art Nouveau, the Pre Raphaelites, Egyptian art, Greek mythology, and Theosophy. Klytie made several plaster masks that were displayed by the Wallers in their home and experimented with linocut, a medium used by Christian in her printmaking. Her aunt further encouraged Klytie by arranging for her to study modelling under Ola Cohn, the Melbourne sculptor. Klytie became renowned for her high quality, geometric Art Deco designed pottery which is eagerly sought after today by museums, art galleries, collectors and auction houses.

 

Fairy Hills is a small north eastern suburb of Melbourne. Leafy, with streets lined with banks of agapanthus, it is an area well known for its exclusivity, affluence and artistic connections. It was designed along the lines of London’s garden suburbs, such as Hampstead and Highgate, where houses and gardens blended together to create an informal, village like feel. Many of Fairy Hills’ houses have been designed by well known architects of the early Twentieth Century such as Walter Burley Griffin (1876 – 1937) and have gardens landscaped by designers like Edna Walling (1895 – 1973). Fairy Hills is the result of a subdivision of an 1840s farm called “Fairy Hills” which was commenced in the years just before the First World War (1914 – 1918). “Lucerne Farm”, a late 1830s farm associated with Governor La Trobe, was also nearby.

  

Located at the end of a sleepy little cul-de-sac in the leafy north east Melburnian suburb of Fairy Hills is a beautiful pebbledash Arts and Crafts style bungalow. Quiet and unassuming amid its well kept gardens, this bungalow is quite significant historically as it is the creation and home of nationally renowned husband and wife artists Christian and Napier Waller, and is known as the Waller House. Together they designed the house and much of its interior decoration and furnishings. Napier Waller lived in their purpose designed home for some fifty years. What is especially significant about the house is that both it and its contents are quite intact. Napier Waller's studios, examples of his art, that of his two wives and his niece, famous studio potter Klytie Pate, and items connected with his work remain exactly as he left them. Architecturally the house design is innovative in its internal use of space, specifically in the organisation of the studio cum living room and displays a high degree of artistic creativity in the interior decoration.

 

The Waller House in Fairy Hills is so named because it was the residence of Mervyn Napier Waller, the acclaimed artist who gained National fame from his water colours, stained glass, mosaic works and murals and his wife Christian, who was a distinguished artist and designer of stained glass in her own right. In particular Napier Waller's works adorn the Melbourne Town Hall, the Myer Emporium Mural Hall, the Victorian State Library and the Australian War Memorial. The Waller House is a split level house designed by Napier and his first wife Christian who intended the house to be both a home and a workplace. For this the design was conceived to accommodate the tall studies and pieces of the artist's work.

 

The Waller house was built by Phillip Millsom in 1922 and the architectural style of the house is a mixture of Interwar Arts and Crafts, Interwar Old English and Interwar California Bungalow. The house is constructed from reinforced concrete walls with a rough cast pebbledash finish. The roof is steeply pitched with a prominent half timbered gable over the front entrance and has Marseilles pattern terracotta tiles. There are small paned casement windows. There have been several additions to the original design over the years but these have all been sympathetic to the original design.

 

The house is entered from a two sided verandah into an entrance hall, panelled in Tasmanian wood. This has stairs leading to the different levels of the house interior. In one direction the hall leads to a main living hall which was Napier Waller's original studio and later used as the main living room in the house. This room has a high ceiling with casement windows, a musicians’ gallery and a broad brick fireplace flanked by fire-dogs and bellows made by the sculptress Ola Cohn (1892 – 1964). Like many of the other rooms in the house the studio is panelled and floored with Tasmanian hardwood and contains some of the studies for Napier Waller's murals: “The Five Lamps of Learning; the Wise and Foolish Virgins” a mosaic for the University of Western Australia and, “Peace After Victory” a study painting for the State Library of Victoria. Above the panelling the plaster walls are painted in muted colours in wood grain effect. The raftered plaster ceiling has been painted in marble effect with gold leaf. Book shelves, still containing the Wallers’ beautiful books, are built into the panelled walls. Furniture in the room includes a settee with a painted back panel featuring jousting knights, painted by Christian Waller, a leather suite and black bean sideboards and cupboards. This furniture was designed in the nineteen thirties by Napier Waller and by Percy Meldrum and a noted cabinet maker called Goulman. The studio cum hall also contains many ceramic works created by studio potter Klytie Pate who was Christian Waller’s niece and protégée. The entrance hall leads in the other direction to a guest room, known as the “Blue Room”. This was the idea of Napier's wife Christian and has simple built-in glass topped furniture and Napier's murals of the “Labours of Hercules” which include a self portrait of the artist. An alcove section of the room was constructed out of an extension to the verandah. Stairs lead from the entrance hall to the musicians’ gallery which has a window and overlooks the studio cum living room. The kitchen near the studio/hall is panelled and raftered with built-in cupboards conforming to the panelling. The ceiling is stencilled in a fleur-de-lys design by Napier. The dining room lies to the right of the studio cum hall and contains shoulder high panelling and raftered ceilings. It has an angled brick corner fireplace and the walls and ceiling have the same painted treatment as the studio cum living room. The oak dining furniture was designed by Napier. A small den with high window, furnished with leather chairs, opens off the dining room. Opening off the hall to the left is a long rectangular room known as the glass studio. This was added to the house by builder C. Trinck of Hampton in about 1931 and contains Napier Waller's kiln, paintbrushes and stained-glass tools on the benches, and stained glass designs and racks which are still stacked with radiant streaked glass from his work with stained glass windows. A bedroom and bathroom with attic pitched rafter ceiling and casement windows is situated on the upper level of the house. Another bedroom in ship's cabin style with flared wall light fittings and built in bunks opens off this first bedroom.

 

The house backs onto a courtyard enclosed by a long bluestone garden wall. The house is set in a three and a half acre site with cypress hedges and gravelled paths. The garden drops away to a hillside slope with manna gum trees. Set on the slope is a flat roofed studio built in 1937. It has an undercroft beneath a studio room and this contains a lithographic press and a printing press of 1849 for woodcuts and linocuts. This was used by Napier and his first wife Christian to produce prints in the 1930s. Napier was widowed and married his stained glass studio assistant Lorna Reyburn in 1958.

 

The Waller House has recently become famous for yet another reason. The exterior has been used as a backdrop in the ABC/ITV co-production television series, “The Doctor Blake Mysteries” (2013). The house serves as the residence of the program’s lead character, Doctor Lucien Blake (played by Australian actor Craig McLachlan), and the doctor’s 1930s tourer is often seen driving up to or away from the Waller House throughout the series. The Waller House is the only regular backdrop not filmed in the provincial Victorian gold rush city of Ballarat, in which the series is based.

 

The Waller House is still a private residence, even though it was bequeathed to the people of Victoria by Napier Waller under the proviso that it would not revert to state ownership until after the death of his second wife, Lorna. The current leasee of the Waller House is a well known Melbourne antique dealer, who was friends with Lorna Reyburn, and who acts as a loving informal caretaker. He was approached by the Napier Waller Committee of Management and keeps the house neat and tidy, and maintains the garden beautifully. I am very grateful to him for his willingness to open the Waller House, and for allowing me the opportunity to comprehensively photograph this rarely seen gem of Melbourne art, architecture and history.

 

Mervyn Napier Waller (1893 – 1972) was an Australian artist. Born in Penshurst, Victoria, Napier was the son of William Waller, contractor, and his wife Sarah, née Napier. Educated locally until aged 14, he then worked on his father's farm. In 1913 he began studies at the National Gallery schools, Melbourne, and first exhibited water-colours and drawings at the Victorian Artists' Society in 1915. On 31 August of that year he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, and on 21 October at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, married Christian Yandell, a fellow student and artist from Castlemaine. Serving in France from the end of 1916, Waller was seriously wounded in action, and his right arm had to be amputated at the shoulder. Whilst convalescing in France and England Napier learned to write and draw with his left hand. After coming home to Australia he exhibited a series of war sketches in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart between 1918 and 1919 which helped to establish his reputation as a talented artist. Napier continued to paint in water-colour, taking his subjects from mythology and classical legend, but exhibited a group of linocuts in 1923. In 1927 Napier completed his first major mural for the Menzies Hotel, Melbourne. Next year his mural 'Peace after Victory' was installed in the State Library of Victoria. Visiting England and Europe in 1929 to study stained glass, the Wallers travelled in Italy where Napier was deeply impressed by the mosaics in Ravenna and studied mosaic in Venice. He returned to Melbourne in March 1930 and began to work almost exclusively in stained glass and mosaic. In 1931 he completed a great monumental mosaic for the University of Western Australia; two important commissions in Melbourne followed: the mosaic façade for Newspaper House (completed 1933) and murals for the dining hall in the Myer Emporium (completed 1935). During this time he also worked on a number of stained-glass commissions, some in collaboration with his wife, Christian. Between 1939 and 1945 he worked as an illustrator and undertook no major commissions. In 1946 he finished a three-lancet window commemorating the New Guinea martyrs for St Peter's Church, Eastern Hill. In 1952-58 he designed and completed the mosaics and stained glass for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. On 25 January 1958 in a civil ceremony in Melbourne Waller had married Lorna Marion Reyburn, a New Zealand-born artist who had long been his assistant in stained glass.

 

Christian Waller (1894 – 1954) was an Australian artist. Born in Castlemaine, Victoria, Christian was the fifth daughter and youngest of seven children of William Edward Yandell a Victorian-born plasterer, and his wife Emily, née James, who came from England. Christian began her art studies in 1905 under Carl Steiner at the Castlemaine School of Mines. The family moved in 1910 to Melbourne where Christian attended the National Gallery schools. She studied under Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall, won several student prizes, exhibited (1913-22) with the Victorian Artists Society and illustrated publications. On 21 October 1915 at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, she married her former fellow-student Mervyn Napier Waller; they were childless, but adopted Christian’s niece Klytie Pate, in all but a legal sense. During the 1920s Christian Waller became a leading book illustrator, winning acclaim as the first Australian artist to illustrate Alice in Wonderland (1924). Her work reflected Classical, Medieval, Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau influences. She also produced woodcuts and linocuts, including fine bookplates. From about 1928 she designed stained-glass windows. The Wallers travelled to London in 1929 to investigate the manufacture of stained glass at Whall & Whall Ltd's premises. Returning to Australia via Italy, they studied the mosaics at Ravenna and Venice. Christian signed and exhibited her work under her maiden name until 1930, but thereafter used her married name. In the 1930s Waller produced her finest prints, book designs and stained glass, her work being more Art Deco in style and showing her interest in theosophy. She created stained-glass windows for a number of churches—especially for those designed by Louis Williams—in Melbourne, Geelong, and rural centres in New South Wales. Sometimes she collaborated with her husband, both being recognized as among Australia's leading stained-glass artists. Estranged from Napier, Christian went to New York in 1939. In 1940 she returned to the home she shared with her husband in Fairy Hills where she immersed herself in her work and became increasingly reclusive. In 1942 she painted a large mural for Christ Church, Geelong; by 1948 she had completed more than fifty stained-glass windows.

 

Klytie Pate (1912 – 2010) was an Australian Studio Potter who emerged as an innovator in the use of unusual glazes and the extensive incising, piercing and ornamentation of earthenware pottery. She was one of a small group of Melbourne art potters which included Marguerite Mahood and Reg Preston who were pioneers in the 1930‘s of ceramic art nationwide. Her early work was strongly influenced by her aunt, the artist and printmaker, Christian Waller. Klytie’s father remarried when she was 13, so Klytie went to live with her aunt, Christian Waller. Christian and her husband Napier Waller encouraged her interest in art and printmaking. She spent time at their studio in Fairy Hills, and thus her work reflected Art Deco, Art Nouveau, the Pre Raphaelites, Egyptian art, Greek mythology, and Theosophy. Klytie made several plaster masks that were displayed by the Wallers in their home and experimented with linocut, a medium used by Christian in her printmaking. Her aunt further encouraged Klytie by arranging for her to study modelling under Ola Cohn, the Melbourne sculptor. Klytie became renowned for her high quality, geometric Art Deco designed pottery which is eagerly sought after today by museums, art galleries, collectors and auction houses.

 

Fairy Hills is a small north eastern suburb of Melbourne. Leafy, with streets lined with banks of agapanthus, it is an area well known for its exclusivity, affluence and artistic connections. It was designed along the lines of London’s garden suburbs, such as Hampstead and Highgate, where houses and gardens blended together to create an informal, village like feel. Many of Fairy Hills’ houses have been designed by well known architects of the early Twentieth Century such as Walter Burley Griffin (1876 – 1937) and have gardens landscaped by designers like Edna Walling (1895 – 1973). Fairy Hills is the result of a subdivision of an 1840s farm called “Fairy Hills” which was commenced in the years just before the First World War (1914 – 1918). “Lucerne Farm”, a late 1830s farm associated with Governor La Trobe, was also nearby.

 

A billboard removal in Bethnal Green, in early 2013 revealed this old painted sign for Hartcraft Upholstery.

In fact there are 2 signs here, the earlier sign reads.

 

Cabinet Makers

Upholsterers &

Chair Frame Makers.

 

The more recent lettering reads.

 

Modern(painted over)

Hartcraft

Upholstery

 

Judging by the style of lettering the more recent sign can be dated to the 1930s.

Since moving in earlier this year, our new old house is slowly, patiently, starting to come together. The house was built in 1910, and the gentleman who owned this house previously (and I do know he is a gentleman because he left little helpful notes for us all over the house, and dropped off the history of the house just the other night) - he was a cabinet maker and the house was *full* of his shelving *everywhere*. It's taken us months to remove much of it and it took me a couple of weeks to paint out these built-ins. (5 coats!) The main floor has 9.5 ft ceilings and these shelves go all the way up. It was great fun trying to paint with Reid in his climbing ladders phase.

 

But it feels like this house is where my heart lives. I really love it and my soul feels at home here in this place. Everything seems to have come together and it is a magical feeling. And I love having lots of little minor projects to keep me busy. I am constantly planning and plotting! This type of thing suits me well.

 

Charleston est. 1670, pop. 127,999 (2013)

 

Marker:

54 Queen Street

The workshop of Thomas Elfe / Erected circa 1760 in the old section of the city. A rare surviving example of its kind containing 4 finely paneled rooms and other trim which makes it exceptional for a house of its modest size.

 

• Georgian-style single house built by London-born master cabinetmaker, Thomas Elfe (1719-1775) • Charles Town's most prolific & acclaimed 18th c. furniture craftsman

 

• Elfe's work based on designs in The Gentleman and Cabinet-Maker's Director, a book self-published in 1754 by furniture designer Thomas Chippendale (1718–1779)

 

• Elfe was also a real estate investor • owned a 234 acre plantation worked by slaves • politically was a loyalist w/strong ties to Britain

 

• house restored, 1994 • A Visit to Thomas Elfe's House -Popular Woodworking • Wikipedia • HABS SC-286 • Charleston Historic District, National Register # 66000964, 1969 • declared National Historic Landmark District, 1973

Casterton and the Australian Kelpie.

The Australian kelpie breed begins in Scotland as a collie but is cross bred in Victoria’s western district with dingoes. The origins of collie is probably derived from the Scots word “col” meaning black, while others say it was borrowed from the collie sheep of the Scottish Highlands. In 1843 George Robertson, a cabinet maker, took over the nearby Warrock Station. He brought with him from Van Diemans Land his working collies. George had two imported dogs, and he always refused to give the female pups away because he wanted to keep the breed pure. But the main female collie was cross bred with dingoes by Jack Gleeson on the adjoining property to Warrock. The Kelpie breed emerged from Warrock Station in the 1870s and the breed was refined by Jack Gleeson after he moved to Ardlethan in western NSW. To recognise the importance of this Australian breed the Australian Kelpie Centre opened in 2018 at a cost of $1.5 million which includes the Visitor Centre. Casterton has an annual Kelpie festival and a statue of a Kelpie adorns the entrance to the town. The dog is named after the mythological kelpie of Scottish folklore which is a horse like or human like inhabitant of the lochs. Kelpies are now famed sheep dogs used around the world.

 

The town is almost encircled by the Glenelg River which may have given it its name from the old Roman word for a walled town – Casterton. The site of the town was a popular crossing spot of the Glenelg River and the NSW government surveyed a town in 1852 although a hotel had opened her in 1846 and a post office in 1847. The Main Street was named Henty Street as the town sits close to the Henty’s properties of Merino Downs, Sandford and Muntham. The emerging town of the late 1850s and early 1860s was progressing well with some solid public buildings. Apart from stores and hotels there was the Anglican Church built in 1857 but replaced in 1866, the Presbyterian church of 1866 (a second built in 1908), a Courthouse and the Glenelg Shire Council Offices erected in 1866. As some of the larger pastoral estates were subdivided for closer settlement in the 1870s and with this came the farmers and a flourmill was erected in the town in 1873, a local newspaper had begun publications in 1869 and the 1870s saw the building of several banks. The railway from Hamilton reached Casterton in 1884 when a grand new railway station was built. That line closed in 1977. By 1900 Casterton had five hotels, five churches, two schools, a Mechanics Institute and a town population of 1,250 people. In the mid-20th century a new Town Hall was built in 1937.

 

Entering from Mt Gambier these are some of the historic buildings in the Main Street.

•First on left is the Anglican Church built in 1866.

•Next on right is the former Methodist Church built in 1877 but now a private home.

•Opposite on left is the second Presbyterian Church with tower built with double Gothic doors in 1908.

•Next on left is the first Presbyterian Church built in 1866. Sold to become a Masonic Lodge in 1902.

•Next on right you can see down to the railway station and yards. Station built 1886. Closed 1977. This is just before the Australian Kelpie Centre and Info Centre.

•Next on left the National Australia Bank circa 1890 now NAB.

•On right the Casterton Hotel built in 1860. The current façade was done around 1900.

•Next to it is a grand classical style building possibly a bank and residence from around 1880. Opposite it is the Entwined café.

•Next on right is the Town Hall built in 1937.

•Next on right is the tiny Art Deco Commonwealth Bank.

•Next to it is the ANZ Bank with rounded Art Deco style features. Built around 1920.

•Also on the right is the old Courthouse built in 1875 and recently a Community Centre.

•Next to it on the right is the Post Office. This eclectic building has Art Deco and classical features. A mix of styles. Opened in 1910. Note the classical style triangular pediment in the Art Deco rounded window in the centre of the ground floor.

•Lastly on the right is the Albion Hotel. The early 1865 brick hotel was washed away in a Glenelg River flood in 1906. The iconic present structure was built in 1907 with flair and flamboyance. Good symmetry, three street facing gables, ornamentation, cast iron lacework on the two verandas and unusual window entablature.

 

at the North Carolina Arboretum, Asheville.

A "Chippendale" style bench.

 

Thos. Chippendale was a very famous London cabinet-maker of the middle 18th century; his styles and derivatives thereof have remained popular. In the late 20th C. his name became attached to certain styles of garden bench, of which this is one.

 

"Thomas Chippendale's designs became very popular (again) during the middle to late 19th century, leading to widespread adoption of his name in revivals of his style. Many of these later designs bear little relationship to his original concepts."

--Wikipedia.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Chippendale

 

Actually, the bench illustrates a particular type of design that Chippendale adopted from China (Chinese goods and designs began to enter Europe in the 18th C.), altho' the Wikipedia entry does not mention it.

This a monument peculiar to Bloxwich, created in memory of one of the town's main industries, the manufacture of awl blades.

 

Walsall Corporation raised this mound of old anvil stones as a monument to the "bitties and tackies" who practiced their cottage industries around what was first known as 'The Short Heath' or Bloxwich Green, and later as Bloxwich Park.

 

The stones - small glacial boulders found in local farmers' fields - had holes chiselled into them, and were used to support small iron and steel anvil blocks upon which were beaten out all kinds of metal items, but most particularly "awl blades of Bloxwich repute" - for which the town was world-famous from the early 19th century onwards.

 

An awl blade is a pointed instrument for piercing small holes in leather or wood, and not surprisingly Bloxwich awl blades were used in Walsall's leather industry.

 

Awl blades are used by shoemakers, saddlers, and cabinet makers. The blade is differently shaped and pointed for different uses, as in the brad awl, saddler's awl, and shoemaker's awl.

  

Kedleston Hall

 

An extravagant temple to the arts. Commissioned in the 1750s by Nathaniel Curzon whose ancestors had resided at Kedleston since the 12th century. The house is framed by historic parkland and boasts opulent interiors intended to impress.

 

Designed for lavish entertaining, Kedleston Hall displays an extensive collection of paintings, sculptures and original furnishings reflecting both the tastes of its creators and their fascination with the classical world of the Roman Empire.

 

Inherited by George Nathaniel Curzon, Viceroy of India between 1899 and 1905, the hall also houses the many objects he amassed during his travels in South Asia and the Middle East, and in his role leading British rule in India.

 

Grade I Listed

 

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kedleston_Hall

 

www.nationaltrust.org.uk/visit/peak-district-derbyshire/k...

  

The Drawing Room

 

One of two magnificent pairs of giltwood sofas in the state drawing room.

 

by John Linnell

Cabinet maker, upholsterer and carver.

(1729-1796)

 

They were commissioned by Nathaniel Curzon, 1st Baron Scarsdale and delivered to Kedleston in 1765.

 

www.nationaltrustcollections.org.uk/object/108607.2

Located at the end of a sleepy little cul-de-sac in the leafy north east Melburnian suburb of Fairy Hills is a beautiful pebbledash Arts and Crafts style bungalow. Quiet and unassuming amid its well kept gardens, this bungalow is quite significant historically as it is the creation and home of nationally renowned husband and wife artists Christian and Napier Waller, and is known as the Waller House. Together they designed the house and much of its interior decoration and furnishings. Napier Waller lived in their purpose designed home for some fifty years. What is especially significant about the house is that both it and its contents are quite intact. Napier Waller's studios, examples of his art, that of his two wives and his niece, famous studio potter Klytie Pate, and items connected with his work remain exactly as he left them. Architecturally the house design is innovative in its internal use of space, specifically in the organisation of the studio cum living room and displays a high degree of artistic creativity in the interior decoration.

 

The Waller House in Fairy Hills is so named because it was the residence of Mervyn Napier Waller, the acclaimed artist who gained National fame from his water colours, stained glass, mosaic works and murals and his wife Christian, who was a distinguished artist and designer of stained glass in her own right. In particular Napier Waller's works adorn the Melbourne Town Hall, the Myer Emporium Mural Hall, the Victorian State Library and the Australian War Memorial. The Waller House is a split level house designed by Napier and his first wife Christian who intended the house to be both a home and a workplace. For this the design was conceived to accommodate the tall studies and pieces of the artist's work.

 

The Waller house was built by Phillip Millsom in 1922 and the architectural style of the house is a mixture of Interwar Arts and Crafts, Interwar Old English and Interwar California Bungalow. The house is constructed from reinforced concrete walls with a rough cast pebbledash finish. The roof is steeply pitched with a prominent half timbered gable over the front entrance and has Marseilles pattern terracotta tiles. There are small paned casement windows. There have been several additions to the original design over the years but these have all been sympathetic to the original design.

 

The house is entered from a two sided verandah into an entrance hall, panelled in Tasmanian wood. This has stairs leading to the different levels of the house interior. In one direction the hall leads to a main living hall which was Napier Waller's original studio and later used as the main living room in the house. This room has a high ceiling with casement windows, a musicians’ gallery and a broad brick fireplace flanked by fire-dogs and bellows made by the sculptress Ola Cohn (1892 – 1964). Like many of the other rooms in the house the studio is panelled and floored with Tasmanian hardwood and contains some of the studies for Napier Waller's murals: “The Five Lamps of Learning; the Wise and Foolish Virgins” a mosaic for the University of Western Australia and, “Peace After Victory” a study painting for the State Library of Victoria. Above the panelling the plaster walls are painted in muted colours in wood grain effect. The raftered plaster ceiling has been painted in marble effect with gold leaf. Book shelves, still containing the Wallers’ beautiful books, are built into the panelled walls. Furniture in the room includes a settee with a painted back panel featuring jousting knights, painted by Christian Waller, a leather suite and black bean sideboards and cupboards. This furniture was designed in the nineteen thirties by Napier Waller and by Percy Meldrum and a noted cabinet maker called Goulman. The studio cum hall also contains many ceramic works created by studio potter Klytie Pate who was Christian Waller’s niece and protégée. The entrance hall leads in the other direction to a guest room, known as the “Blue Room”. This was the idea of Napier's wife Christian and has simple built-in glass topped furniture and Napier's murals of the “Labours of Hercules” which include a self portrait of the artist. An alcove section of the room was constructed out of an extension to the verandah. Stairs lead from the entrance hall to the musicians’ gallery which has a window and overlooks the studio cum living room. The kitchen near the studio/hall is panelled and raftered with built-in cupboards conforming to the panelling. The ceiling is stencilled in a fleur-de-lys design by Napier. The dining room lies to the right of the studio cum hall and contains shoulder high panelling and raftered ceilings. It has an angled brick corner fireplace and the walls and ceiling have the same painted treatment as the studio cum living room. The oak dining furniture was designed by Napier. A small den with high window, furnished with leather chairs, opens off the dining room. Opening off the hall to the left is a long rectangular room known as the glass studio. This was added to the house by builder C. Trinck of Hampton in about 1931 and contains Napier Waller's kiln, paintbrushes and stained-glass tools on the benches, and stained glass designs and racks which are still stacked with radiant streaked glass from his work with stained glass windows. A bedroom and bathroom with attic pitched rafter ceiling and casement windows is situated on the upper level of the house. Another bedroom in ship's cabin style with flared wall light fittings and built in bunks opens off this first bedroom.

 

The house backs onto a courtyard enclosed by a long bluestone garden wall. The house is set in a three and a half acre site with cypress hedges and gravelled paths. The garden drops away to a hillside slope with manna gum trees. Set on the slope is a flat roofed studio built in 1937. It has an undercroft beneath a studio room and this contains a lithographic press and a printing press of 1849 for woodcuts and linocuts. This was used by Napier and his first wife Christian to produce prints in the 1930s. Napier was widowed and married his stained glass studio assistant Lorna Reyburn in 1958.

 

The Waller House has recently become famous for yet another reason. The exterior has been used as a backdrop in the ABC/ITV co-production television series, “The Doctor Blake Mysteries” (2013). The house serves as the residence of the program’s lead character, Doctor Lucien Blake (played by Australian actor Craig McLachlan), and the doctor’s 1930s tourer is often seen driving up to or away from the Waller House throughout the series. The Waller House is the only regular backdrop not filmed in the provincial Victorian gold rush city of Ballarat, in which the series is based.

 

The Waller House is still a private residence, even though it was bequeathed to the people of Victoria by Napier Waller under the proviso that it would not revert to state ownership until after the death of his second wife, Lorna. The current leasee of the Waller House is a well known Melbourne antique dealer, who was friends with Lorna Reyburn, and who acts as a loving informal caretaker. He was approached by the Napier Waller Committee of Management and keeps the house neat and tidy, and maintains the garden beautifully. I am very grateful to him for his willingness to open the Waller House, and for allowing me the opportunity to comprehensively photograph this rarely seen gem of Melbourne art, architecture and history.

 

Mervyn Napier Waller (1893 – 1972) was an Australian artist. Born in Penshurst, Victoria, Napier was the son of William Waller, contractor, and his wife Sarah, née Napier. Educated locally until aged 14, he then worked on his father's farm. In 1913 he began studies at the National Gallery schools, Melbourne, and first exhibited water-colours and drawings at the Victorian Artists' Society in 1915. On 31 August of that year he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, and on 21 October at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, married Christian Yandell, a fellow student and artist from Castlemaine. Serving in France from the end of 1916, Waller was seriously wounded in action, and his right arm had to be amputated at the shoulder. Whilst convalescing in France and England Napier learned to write and draw with his left hand. After coming home to Australia he exhibited a series of war sketches in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart between 1918 and 1919 which helped to establish his reputation as a talented artist. Napier continued to paint in water-colour, taking his subjects from mythology and classical legend, but exhibited a group of linocuts in 1923. In 1927 Napier completed his first major mural for the Menzies Hotel, Melbourne. Next year his mural 'Peace after Victory' was installed in the State Library of Victoria. Visiting England and Europe in 1929 to study stained glass, the Wallers travelled in Italy where Napier was deeply impressed by the mosaics in Ravenna and studied mosaic in Venice. He returned to Melbourne in March 1930 and began to work almost exclusively in stained glass and mosaic. In 1931 he completed a great monumental mosaic for the University of Western Australia; two important commissions in Melbourne followed: the mosaic façade for Newspaper House (completed 1933) and murals for the dining hall in the Myer Emporium (completed 1935). During this time he also worked on a number of stained-glass commissions, some in collaboration with his wife, Christian. Between 1939 and 1945 he worked as an illustrator and undertook no major commissions. In 1946 he finished a three-lancet window commemorating the New Guinea martyrs for St Peter's Church, Eastern Hill. In 1952-58 he designed and completed the mosaics and stained glass for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. On 25 January 1958 in a civil ceremony in Melbourne Waller had married Lorna Marion Reyburn, a New Zealand-born artist who had long been his assistant in stained glass.

 

Christian Waller (1894 – 1954) was an Australian artist. Born in Castlemaine, Victoria, Christian was the fifth daughter and youngest of seven children of William Edward Yandell a Victorian-born plasterer, and his wife Emily, née James, who came from England. Christian began her art studies in 1905 under Carl Steiner at the Castlemaine School of Mines. The family moved in 1910 to Melbourne where Christian attended the National Gallery schools. She studied under Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall, won several student prizes, exhibited (1913-22) with the Victorian Artists Society and illustrated publications. On 21 October 1915 at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, she married her former fellow-student Mervyn Napier Waller; they were childless, but adopted Christian’s niece Klytie Pate, in all but a legal sense. During the 1920s Christian Waller became a leading book illustrator, winning acclaim as the first Australian artist to illustrate Alice in Wonderland (1924). Her work reflected Classical, Medieval, Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau influences. She also produced woodcuts and linocuts, including fine bookplates. From about 1928 she designed stained-glass windows. The Wallers travelled to London in 1929 to investigate the manufacture of stained glass at Whall & Whall Ltd's premises. Returning to Australia via Italy, they studied the mosaics at Ravenna and Venice. Christian signed and exhibited her work under her maiden name until 1930, but thereafter used her married name. In the 1930s Waller produced her finest prints, book designs and stained glass, her work being more Art Deco in style and showing her interest in theosophy. She created stained-glass windows for a number of churches—especially for those designed by Louis Williams—in Melbourne, Geelong, and rural centres in New South Wales. Sometimes she collaborated with her husband, both being recognized as among Australia's leading stained-glass artists. Estranged from Napier, Christian went to New York in 1939. In 1940 she returned to the home she shared with her husband in Fairy Hills where she immersed herself in her work and became increasingly reclusive. In 1942 she painted a large mural for Christ Church, Geelong; by 1948 she had completed more than fifty stained-glass windows.

 

Klytie Pate (1912 – 2010) was an Australian Studio Potter who emerged as an innovator in the use of unusual glazes and the extensive incising, piercing and ornamentation of earthenware pottery. She was one of a small group of Melbourne art potters which included Marguerite Mahood and Reg Preston who were pioneers in the 1930‘s of ceramic art nationwide. Her early work was strongly influenced by her aunt, the artist and printmaker, Christian Waller. Klytie’s father remarried when she was 13, so Klytie went to live with her aunt, Christian Waller. Christian and her husband Napier Waller encouraged her interest in art and printmaking. She spent time at their studio in Fairy Hills, and thus her work reflected Art Deco, Art Nouveau, the Pre Raphaelites, Egyptian art, Greek mythology, and Theosophy. Klytie made several plaster masks that were displayed by the Wallers in their home and experimented with linocut, a medium used by Christian in her printmaking. Her aunt further encouraged Klytie by arranging for her to study modelling under Ola Cohn, the Melbourne sculptor. Klytie became renowned for her high quality, geometric Art Deco designed pottery which is eagerly sought after today by museums, art galleries, collectors and auction houses.

 

Fairy Hills is a small north eastern suburb of Melbourne. Leafy, with streets lined with banks of agapanthus, it is an area well known for its exclusivity, affluence and artistic connections. It was designed along the lines of London’s garden suburbs, such as Hampstead and Highgate, where houses and gardens blended together to create an informal, village like feel. Many of Fairy Hills’ houses have been designed by well known architects of the early Twentieth Century such as Walter Burley Griffin (1876 – 1937) and have gardens landscaped by designers like Edna Walling (1895 – 1973). Fairy Hills is the result of a subdivision of an 1840s farm called “Fairy Hills” which was commenced in the years just before the First World War (1914 – 1918). “Lucerne Farm”, a late 1830s farm associated with Governor La Trobe, was also nearby.

  

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_St_Michael_and_All_Angels...

 

St Michael's Church is a parish church in the town of Aberystwyth, Ceredigion, Wales. St Michael's is the fourth church to stand on the site. The first dated from the 15th century but was in ruins by the mid-18th century. Its replacement only stood for some forty years before itself being replaced in 1829-1833 with a church designed by Edward Haycock Sr. of Shrewsbury. Nothing of the two earlier buildings remains. The Haycock church was itself superseded by the present church, built by Nicholson & Son of Hereford in 1886-1890. A fragment of the Haycock church remains to the west of the current building.

 

St Michael's is an active parish church in the Diocese of St Davids. At the end of the 20th century it claimed the largest Anglican congregation in Wales. It is designated by Cadw as a Grade II listed building.

 

The town of Aberystwyth developed around the Norman castle. Four churches have stood on the site. In the 15th century a church dedicated to St Mary was constructed between the castle and the sea. This church, in ruins by 1748, and its short-lived successor, were replaced by a third church constructed in 1829-1833 by Edward Haycock Sr. Haycock was commissioned by William Edward Powell. a local landowner and Conservative politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Cardiganshire from 1816 until shortly before he died in 1854. Powell was made High Sheriff in 1810 and Lord Lieutenant of Cardiganshire in 1817. He lived at Nanteos and developed much of Aberystwyth in the 1820s; including Laura Place which fronts the present church.

 

By the later 19th century, the accelerating development of Aberystwyth as a seaside resort brought calls for a larger, and more impressive church. A later William Powell donated further land at Laura Place for the building of a new church in the 1880s. Powell commissioned designs for the new structure from Nicholson & Son of Hereford and the present church was built between 1886-1890. The west vestry is all that remains of Haycock's church, This fragment is a Grade II listed building.

 

The Cambrian News and Merionethshire Standard celebrated the opening of the new church on 3 October 1890, congratulating "all those who desire to see the town beautified, or who think that a building devoted to the highest purpose should be of the best that human beings can devise and reasonably provide". Further work was carried out on the development of the church in the first half of the 20th century. Major repairs were undertaken to the church roof in the 21st century, following storm damage from Cyclone Dirk.

 

St Michael's remains an active parish church in the Evangelical tradition. Services are regularly held. In the late 20th/early 21st centuries, the church claimed the largest Anglican congregation in Wales. The church is administered by the Archdeaconry of Cardigan within the Diocese of St Davids.

 

The "large and prosperous church" is built on a three-nave plan, with a vestry and a West tower. A planned spire was never built. The construction materials are York sandstone rubble and Westmoreland slate roofs. The style is Gothic Revival, drawing on English Decorated Gothic. Thomas Lloyd, Julian Orbach and Robert Scourfield, in their Carmarthenshire and Ceredigion volume in the Pevsner Buildings of Wales series, consider it "old-fashioned", even at the time of its construction.

 

The interior is faced with Bath limestone and decorated with banding in a contrasting red sandstone. It contains a chancel rood screen by W. D. Caröe dating from the early 20th century. Carved panels in a memorial chapel at the front of the church commemorate the dead of Aberystwyth from the First and Second World Wars. The chapel was constructed in 1992 and involved the moving of the rood screen. The stained glass is mainly by Alfred Hemming, although the East window is the work of Heaton, Butler and Bayne. St Michael's is a Grade II listed building.

 

Aberystwyth is a university and seaside town as well as a community in Ceredigion, Wales. Located in the historic county of Cardiganshire, Aberystwyth means "the mouth of the Ystwyth". Aberystwyth University has been a major educational location in Wales since the establishment of University College Wales in 1872.

 

The town is situated on Cardigan Bay on the west coast of Wales, near the confluence of the River Ystwyth and Afon Rheidol. Following the reconstruction of the harbour, the Ystwyth skirts the town. The Rheidol passes through the town.

 

The seafront, with a pier, stretches from Constitution Hill at the north end of the Promenade to the harbour at the south. The beach is divided by the castle. The town is divided into five areas: Aberystwyth Town; Llanbadarn Fawr; Waunfawr; Llanbadarn; Trefechan; and the most populous, Penparcau.

 

In 2011 the population of the town was 13,040. This rises to nearly 19,000 for the larger conurbation of Aberystwyth and Llanbadarn Fawr.

  

Aberystwyth Bay from a 1748 survey by Lewis Morris (1701–1765)

The distance to Swansea is 55 miles (89 km); to Shrewsbury 60 miles (97 km); to Wrexham 63 miles (101 km); to Cardiff 76 miles (122 km); and to London 180 miles (290 km).

 

Aberystwyth is a university town and tourist destination, and forms a cultural link between North Wales and South Wales. Constitution Hill, scaled by the Aberystwyth Cliff Railway, gives access to panoramic views and to other attractions at the summit, including a camera obscura. Scenic Mid Wales landscape within easy reach of the town includes the wilderness of the Cambrian Mountains, whose valleys contain forests and meadows which have changed little in centuries. A convenient way to access the interior is by the preserved narrow-gauge Vale of Rheidol Railway.

 

Although the town is relatively modern, there are a number of historic buildings, including the remains of the castle and the Old College of Aberystwyth University nearby. The Old College was originally built and opened in 1865 as a hotel, but after the owner's bankruptcy the shell of the building was sold to the university in 1867.

 

The new university campus overlooks Aberystwyth from Penglais Hill to the east of the town centre. The station, a terminus of the main railway, was built in 1924 in the typical style of the period, mainly in a mix of Gothic, Classical Revival, and Victorian architecture.

 

The town is the unofficial capital of Mid Wales, and several institutions have regional or national offices there. Public bodies located in the town include the National Library of Wales, which incorporates the National Screen and Sound Archive of Wales, one of six British regional film archives. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales maintains and curates the National Monuments Record of Wales (NMRW), providing the public with information about the built heritage of Wales. Aberystwyth is also the home to the national offices of UCAC and Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Language Society), and the site of the Institute of Grassland and Environmental Research, the Welsh Books Council and the offices of the standard historical dictionary of Welsh, Geiriadur Prifysgol Cymru. A purpose built Welsh Government office and an adjoining office of Ceredigion County Council are also located in the town.

 

At the 2001 census, the population of the town was 15,935. This reduced to 13,040 at the 2011 census. Including neighbouring Llanbadarn Fawr, the population was 16,420, and the greater Aberystwyth conurbation having a population of 18,749 in 2011

 

Aberystwyth experiences an oceanic climate (Köppen climate classification Cfb) similar to almost all of the United Kingdom. This is particularly pronounced due to its west coast location facing the Irish Sea. Air undergoes little land moderation and so temperatures closely reflect the sea temperature when winds are coming from the predominant onshore (westerly) direction. The nearest Met Office weather station is Gogerddan, 3 miles to the northeast, and at a similar elevation.

 

The absolute maximum temperature is 34.6 °C (94.3 °F), set during July 2006. This is also the July record maximum for all of Wales, suggesting that the area's low lying situation, aided by a possible föhn effect when winds are offshore can act to achieve high temperatures on occasion. Typically the warmest day will average 28.0 °C (82.4 °F) and 5.6 days will achieve a maximum of 25.1 °C (77.2 °F) or above.

 

The absolute minimum temperature is −13.5 °C (7.7 °F), set in January 2010. Typically 39.8 days will register an air frost.

 

Rainfall averages 1,112 mm (44 in) a year, with over 1mm recorded on 161 days. All averages refer to the 1981–2010 period.

 

There is evidence that during the Mesolithic Age the area of Tan-y-Bwlch at the foot of Pen Dinas (Penparcau) was used as a flint knapping floor for hunter-gatherers making weapons from flint that was deposited as the ice retreated.

 

The remains of a Celtic fortress on Pen Dinas (or more correctly 'Dinas Maelor'), a hill in Penparcau overlooking Aberystwyth, indicates that the site was inhabited before 700 BC. On a hill south of the present town, across the River Ystwyth, are the remains of a medieval ringfort believed to be the castle from which Princess Nest was abducted. This rare survival is now on private land and can only be accessed by arrangement.

 

The recorded history of Aberystwyth may be said to date from the building of a fortress in 1109 by Gilbert Fitz Richard (grandfather of Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow, the Cambro-Norman lord notable for his leading role in the Norman invasion of Ireland). Gilbert Fitz Richard was granted lands and the lordship of Cardigan by Henry I, including Cardigan Castle. The fortress built in Aberystwyth was located about a mile and a half south of today's town, on a hill over the south bank of the Ystwyth River, thus giving the settlement of Aberystwyth its name. The location is now known as Tan-Y-Castell.

 

Aberystwyth was usually under the control of the princes of Deheubarth, but its position close to the border with Gwynedd and Powys left it vulnerable to attacks from the leaders of those polities. The town was attacked by Gwenwynwyn ab Owain in 1197, an assault in which Maelgwn ap Rhys was captured. Llywelyn the Great attacked and seized the town in late 1208, building a castle there before withdrawing.

 

Edward I replaced Strongbow's castle in 1277, after its destruction by the Welsh. His castle was, however, built in a different location, at the current Castle Hill, the high point of the town. Between the years 1404 and 1408 Aberystwyth Castle was in the hands of Owain Glyndŵr but finally surrendered to Prince Harry (the future King Henry V of England). Shortly after this, the town was incorporated under the title of Ville de Lampadarn (the ancient name of the place being Llanbadarn Gaerog or the fortified Llanbadarn, to distinguish it from Llanbadarn Fawr, the village one mile (1.6 km) inland. It is thus styled in a Royal charter granted by Henry VIII but, by Elizabeth I's time, the town was invariably named Aberystwyth in all documents.

 

From 1639 to 1642, silver coins were minted at Aberystwyth Castle on behalf of the Royal Mint, using silver from local mines. £10,500 in currency was produced, equivalent to 2.5 million silver pennies.

 

In 1649, Parliamentarian troops razed the castle, although portions of three towers still exist. In 1988, an excavation within the castle area revealed a complete male skeleton, deliberately buried. Though skeletons rarely survive in Wales' acidic soil, this skeleton was probably preserved by the addition of lime from the collapsed building. Affectionately known as "Charlie" and now housed in the Ceredigion Museum in the town, he probably dates from the English Civil War period, and is likely to have died during the Parliamentarian siege. His image is featured in one of nine mosaics created to adorn the castle's walls.

 

The development of Aberystwyth's Port contributed to the town’s economic development during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Port improvements were carried out in both 1780 and 1836, with a new Customs House constructed in 1828. Rural industries and craftsmen were also an important part of life in this country town. The local trade directory for 1830 shows that there were in Aberystwyth: Twenty boot makers, eight bakers, two corn millers, eleven carpenters and joiners, one cooper, seven tailors, two dressmakers, two straw hat makers, two hat makers, three curriers, four saddlers, two tinsmiths, six maltsters, two skinners, four tanners, eight stonemasons, one brewer, four lime burners, three shipwrights, three wheelwrights, five cabinet makers, one nail maker, one rope maker and one sail maker.

 

The Cambrian Railways line from Machynlleth reached Aberystwyth in 1864, closely followed by rail links to Carmarthen, which resulted in the construction of the town's impressive station. The Cambrian line opened on Good Friday 1869, the same day that the new 292 metres (958 ft) Royal Pier (designed by Eugenius Birch) opened, attracting 7,000 visitors.

 

The railway's arrival gave rise to something of a Victorian tourist boom, with Aberystwyth becoming a significant holiday destination for working and middle class families from South Wales in particular. The town was once even billed as the "Biarritz of Wales". During this time, a number of hotels and fine townhouses were built including the Queens Hotel, later renamed Swyddfa'r Sir (County Office) when used as offices by the town council, and most recently used as the external scenes of the police station in the television show Hinterland. One of the largest of these hotels, "The Castle Hotel", was never completed as a hotel but, following bankruptcy, was sold cheaply to the Welsh National University Committee, a group of people dedicated to the creation of a Welsh University. The University College of Wales (later to become Aberystwyth University) was founded in 1872 in this building.

 

Aberystwyth was a contributory parliamentary borough until the Third Reform Act, which merged its representation into that of the county in 1885.

 

In 1895, various businessmen who had been behind the Aberystwyth New Harbour Company formed the Aberystwyth Improvement Company (AIC) to take over the works of the defunct Bourne Engineering & Electrical. In 1896, the AIC completed three projects: the new landside pavilion for the Royal Pier; built the Cambria Hotel (later the United Theological College) and formed Constitution Hill Ltd, to develop a Victorian theme park. Chief engineer George Croydon Marks designed all the AIC developments, including the United Kingdom's second longest funicular railway, which takes passengers up a 50% gradient to a park and camera obscura.

 

Aberystwyth hosted the National Eisteddfod in 1865, 1916, 1952 and 1992.

 

On the night of Friday, 14 January 1938, a storm with estimated wind speeds of up to 90 mph (140 km/h) struck the town. Most of the promenade was destroyed, along with 200 feet (60 m) of the pier. Many properties on the seafront were damaged, with every property from the King's Hall north affected; those on Victoria Terrace suffered the greatest damage. Work commenced on a protective coffer dam which continued into 1940, with total costs of construction coming to £70,000 (equivalent to £2.5 million today).

 

Cymdeithas yr Iaith Gymraeg (Welsh Language Society) held their historic first protest on Trefechan Bridge in Aberystwyth, on 2 February 1963. The first independent Welsh Evangelical Church was established in Aberystwyth (see Evangelical Movement of Wales).

 

On 1 March 2005, Aberystwyth was granted Fairtrade Town status.

 

In March 2009 mayor Sue Jones-Davies, who had played the role of Judith Iscariot in the film Monty Python's Life of Brian (1979), organised a charity screening of the film. Principal actors Terry Jones and Michael Palin also attended. There is a popular, but incorrect, urban myth that the town had banned the film (as some authorities did) when it was first released.

 

During the aftermath storms from Cyclone Dirk on Friday 3 January 2014, the town was one of the worst hit in Wales. Properties on the adjoining promenade were then evacuated for the next five days, including 250 students from the University. Ceredigion Council appealed to the Welsh Assembly Government for funds, whilst Natural Resources Wales undertook surveys and emergency preventative measures.

 

North Parade, Aberystwyth was reported to be the most expensive street in Wales in 2018, based on property prices.

 

Penglais Nature Park (Welsh: Parc Natur Penglais) is a woodland overlooking the town. The park was created in 1995 from a disused quarry and surrounding woodland that had formerly been part of the Richardes family estate. In spring a carpet of bluebells bloom, in common with the many other bluebell woods.

 

The park covers 27 acres (11 ha). It was the first Nature reserve to open in Ceredigion and is the only UNESCO Man and Biosphere urban reserve in Wales.

 

Aberystwyth's local government administration has a two-tier structure consisting of two separate councils. As local government is a devolved matter in Wales, the legislation for both Councils is a responsibility of the Senedd.

 

Aberystwyth Town Council is the first tier of local government, which is the closest to the general public; there are 19 elected town councillors from five wards. The last elections were held in 2022. The council is responsible for cycle paths, public footpaths, CCTV, public Wi-Fi, bus shelters, parks, gardens (including the castle grounds and the skateboard park) and allotments. The council is a statutory body which is consulted regarding planning decisions in the town area and makes recommendations to the planning authority, Ceredigion County Council. The Town Council is also involved in leisure, tourism, business (through providing more than half of Menter Aberystwyth's funding in grants), licence applications, wellbeing and environmental health, recycling and refuse collection.

 

A borough council existed in Aberystwyth from 1832 and the Aberystwyth School Board was established in 1870.

 

Ceredigion County Council is another statutory body incorporated by Act of Parliament. It is the second tier of local government in the area and is a unitary authority with a wide range of powers and responsibility. The Council deals with roads (except trunk roads), street lighting, some highways, social services, children and family care, schools and public libraries. Aberystwyth elects six of the 42 councillors in five separate wards (Bronglais, Central, North and Rheidol wards elect one councillor each while Penparcau ward elects two).

 

Aberystwyth has five Senedd members, one of whom (Elin Jones) was elected as a constituency MS for Ceredigion, and four who are elected on the regional list for Mid and West Wales.

 

The town is in the Ceredigion constituency for elections to the House of Commons. Since June 2017, Aberystwyth's MP has been Plaid Cymru's Ben Lake.

 

The first ever public library in Aberystwyth was opened in Compton House, Pier Street on 13 October 1874. In 1882 the library was moved to the Assembly Rooms which were leased to the council for 21 years. The lease expired in 1903 and the library returned to Pier Street, this time to the Old Banking Library at the corner with Eastgate Street, although this was short lived. A Carnegie library was built in Aberystwyth in 1905, with a grant of £3,000. Located in Corporation Street, it was designed by the architect Walter Payton of Birmingham, who was one of 48 who entered the competition to design the building. It was formally opened on 20 April 1906 by Mrs Vaughan Davies, wife of the local MP. The town library moved to Aberystwyth Town Hall, now known as Canolfan Alun R. Edwards, following the building's refurbishment in 2012.

 

The National Library of Wales, Aberystwyth, is the national legal deposit library of Wales. Established in 1907, it is a Welsh Government sponsored body. According to Cyril Evans, the library's centenary events co-ordinator, "The library is considered to be one of the world's greatest libraries, and its international reputation is certainly something that all Welsh men and women are intensely ... proud of". Welsh is the main medium of communication within the organisation; it aims to deliver all public services in Welsh and English.

 

Aberystwyth Arts Centre is one of the largest and busiest arts centres in Wales. It encompasses a 312-seat theatre, 900-seat concert hall, 125-seat cinema, and has accompanied studio, galleries, plus public spaces which include cafes and a bar. Arad Goch is an Arts Council funded community theatre and art gallery based in the town. The premises holds a theatre, gallery, several art studios and meeting rooms, and a darkroom.

 

The town has three works by the Italian sculptor Mario Rutelli; the War Memorial on the promenade, the Tabernacle Chapel Memorial on Powell Street, and the statue of Edward VIII as Prince of Wales in the Old College. All are Grade II listed structures. Rutelli’s connection with the town came through Thomas Jenkins of Aberystwyth, who ran a shipping business. Jenkins was a frequent visitor to Italy where he admired Rutelli’s work. Jo Darke, in her work, The Monument Guide to England and Wales: A National Portrait in Bronze and Stone, describes Rutelli’s war memorial as “striking and rare” and suggests that the life-size statue of Edward VIII is the only recorded example.

 

Aberystwyth has a live music scene which has produced bands and artists such as: The Crocketts; The Hot Puppies; Murry the Hump; and The Lowland Hundred. The University Music Centre promotes a varied programme for instrumentalists, singers and listeners from the university and the wider community. The University chamber choir, The Elizabethan Madrigal Singers, have been singing in the town since 1950 and continue to hold a number of concerts throughout the year. Aberystwyth gives its name to a well known hymn tune composed by Joseph Parry.

 

Aberystwyth RFC is the local rugby union club and acts as a feeder club to professional side Scarlets. It was formed in 1947 and for the 2017/18 season played in the WRU Division One West. Aberystwyth Town F.C. is a semi-professional football club that was formed in 1884. The team currently compete in the Cymru Premier, Wales' top division. The town also has a cricket club which plays in local leagues, an athletics club (founded 1955), and boxing club in Penparcau. The town's golf course opened in 1911.

 

Ceredigion, the county in which Aberystwyth is located, is one of the four most Welsh-speaking counties in Wales and remained majority Welsh speaking until the 2011 census. Since the town's growth as a seaside resort in the Victorian era, it has been more anglicised than its hinterland and the rest of the county in general. The university has also attracted many English-speaking students from England, non-Welsh speaking parts of Wales and elsewhere. The 1891 census recorded that, of the 6635 inhabitants who completed the language section, 3482 (52.5%) were bilingual, 1751 (26.4%) were Welsh monoglots, and 1402 people (21.1%) were returned as English monoglots. Ceredigion (then named Cardiganshire) as a whole was 95.2% Welsh-speaking and 74.5% monoglot Welsh. Although the town remained majority Welsh-speaking for many more decades, English had already replaced Welsh in certain domains, such as entertainment and tourism. By 1961, only 50.0% of the town's population could speak Welsh, compared to 79.5% for Cardiganshire as a whole; by 1971, these numbers had fallen to 44.9% and 67.6% respectively. The 2001 census reported that, in the seven wards of Aberystwyth, 39% of the residents self-identified as able to speak or read or write Welsh. This is lower than Ceredigion as a whole (54%) but higher than Wales overall (19%).

 

Aberystwyth parish church is St Michael's and All Angels, located in Laura Place. The parish was a Rectoral Benefice until 2019, incorporating the Anglican churches of Holy Trinity, Santes Fair (services in Welsh) and Saint Anne's, Penparcau. The Rectoral Benefice has now been converted to a local ministry area (LMA). The church was built between 1886 and 1890, replacing an earlier church. It was designed in a Gothic Revival style and is a Grade II listed building.

 

In addition to the Anglican churches, there are many existing and former Welsh Calvinistic Methodist chapels that have these days merged into Saint David's (United Reformed) and Capel y Morfa (Welsh language services). A former Calvinistic Methodist Sunday school house, Ysgoldy Tanycae, is now the meeting place of the Elim Pentecostal church. Meanwhile there is a Wesleyan Methodist church, Saint Paul's Methodist Centre, located in Bath Street. An Independent Baptist church is located in Alfred Place. In 2021, amid some controversy, Aberystwyth's Catholic church, Saint Winefride's, was closed and the congregation relocated to a new-build church located in Penparcau.

 

There are a number of other smaller congregations, and many former churches that have now been converted to alternative use, such as the Academy bar.

 

Aberystwyth has two comprehensive schools serving the town and a wide rural area: Ysgol Gyfun Gymunedol Penweddig and Ysgol Penglais School. Ysgol Gyfun Gymunedol Penweddig uses Welsh as the primary language of tuition; Ysgol Penglais School teaches in English and in Welsh as a subject.

 

There are currently three primary schools within the town limits, which are: Plascrug, Saint Padarns (Roman Catholic) and Ysgol Gymraeg. Ysgol Gymraeg was the first designated Welsh medium school in Wales, originally established as a private school in 1939 by Sir Ifan ab Owen Edwards as Ysgol Gymraeg yr Urdd.

 

Aberystwyth is home to Aberystwyth University (Welsh: Prifysgol Aberystwyth) whose predecessor, University College Wales, was founded in 1872 and renamed the 'University of Wales, Aberystwyth' in the mid-1990s. Prior to the college's establishment, Wales had very limited academic-degree capability through St David's College, Lampeter (founded in 1822, now the University of Wales, Trinity Saint David).

 

As well as having two cinemas and a golf course, the town's attractions include:

The Aberystwyth Cliff Railway, a funicular railway

A Victorian camera obscura at the top of Constitution Hill.

The Vale of Rheidol steam railway (Aberystwyth to Devil's Bridge)

Aberystwyth Arts Centre.

The Parc Penglais nature reserve

The Ystwyth Trail cycle path

National Library of Wales

Park Avenue. Football stadium home to Aberystwyth Town F.C.

The all organic dairy unit of Rachel's Organic is based in Glan yr Afon, and is the largest private sector employer in Aberystwyth.

 

The Cambrian News newspaper came to Aberystwyth from Bala in 1870, after it was purchased by Sir John Gibson. Printed in Oswestry, in May 1880 the paper integrated operations in a former Malthouse in Mill Street. Owned by the Read family from 1926, in 1993 printing was contracted out, enabling the move of editorial staff to the current open-plan offices on Llanbadarn Fawr Science Park. On the death of Henry Read, the paper was purchased in 1999 by Sir Ray Tindle, whose company owns more than 200 weekly newspapers in Britain. Now printed in tabloid format, Cambrian News is the second-largest weekly-print circulation newspaper in Wales, with 24,000 copies in six regional editorial versions, read by 60,000 weekly readers. The circulation area of mid, west and north Wales covers 3,000 square miles (7,800 km2).

 

Since the TV series Hinterland has been filmed in and around Aberystwyth, the area is being promoted as an opportunity for tourists to visit filming locations; many are well publicised.

 

Aberystwyth railway station is situated in the town centre and is the terminus of the scenic Cambrian Line. Transport for Wales Rail operate a mostly hourly service (with some two-hour intervals) to Shrewsbury via Machynlleth and Mid Wales, with nearly all trains continuing to Birmingham International. Connecting services from Dovey Junction provide a link to Gwynedd's west coast as far as Pwllheli, along the Cambrian Coast Line. There is no longer a southbound connection: the Carmarthen–Aberystwyth line was closed in 1965 as part of the Beeching cuts.

 

Aberystwyth station is also the terminus of the Vale of Rheidol Railway, a steam-operated narrow gauge heritage railway. Constructed between 1901 and 1902, it was intended to ship mineral cargo, primarily lead, from Devil's Bridge down to Aberystwyth for trans-shipment. By the time it was finished, lead mining was in a deep downturn and—thanks to the Aberystwyth Improvement Company—the railway came to rely largely on the tourist industry, opening for passengers in December 1902. It still remains open for the summer season, with a journey of 12 miles (19 km).

 

In 1896, the Aberystwyth Improvement Company formed Constitution Hill Ltd which, under the direction of chief engineer George Croydon Marks, developed the United Kingdom's second longest funicular railway, the Aberystwyth Cliff Railway, which takes passengers up a 50% gradient.

 

A TrawsCymru T1 service on the A4120 in Aberystwyth

Aberystwyth is a hub for the TrawsCymru bus network, with four routes serving the town:

 

T1 - hourly service to Carmarthen (connects with T1S to Swansea, Monday-Saturday) via Aberaeron and Lampeter - with one service a day (Monday-Saturday) extended to Cardiff

T1C - daily express coach service to Cardiff, via Aberaeron, Carmarthen (connects with T1S to Swansea, Monday-Saturday), Swansea (Sunday & Bank Holidays only), Port Talbot Parkway and Bridgend

T2 - every 1–2 hours to Bangor via Machynlleth, Dolgellau (connects with T3 to Barmouth and Wrexham), Porthmadog and Caernarfon

T5 - hourly service to Haverfordwest via Aberaeron, New Quay, Cardigan and Fishguard

(TrawsCymru services run less-frequently on Sundays.)

 

There is a daily National Express coach, service 409 to London via Birmingham, along with local bus services within the town and into the surrounding area.

 

The A44 and A487 meet with much traffic between North Wales and South West Wales passing through the town. The A4120 links the A44 and A487 between Llanbadarn Fawr and Penparcau, allowing through traffic to bypass the town centre.

 

The B4574 mountain road linking the town to Rhayader is described by the AA as one of the ten most scenic drives in the world.

 

The port of Aberystwyth, although it is small and relatively inconsequential today, used to be an important Atlantic Ocean entryway. It was used to ship locally, to Ireland and as a transatlantic departure point. Commercially, the once important Cardiganshire lead mines exported from this location.

 

The importance of maritime trade in the 19th century is reflected in the fact that a lifeboat has been based at Aberystwyth since 1843, when a 27 ft (8.2 m) boat powered by six oars was funded by public subscription and placed under the control of the harbourmaster. The RNLI took over the service in 1861 and established Aberystwyth Lifeboat Station which celebrated 150 years in 2011. The station uses the Atlantic 85-class inshore lifeboat Spirit of Friendship.

 

The Owl Service by Alan Garner, a well-known and -loved multi-award-winning classic published 1967, is set in north Wales and has two of its core characters —Gwyn and his mam (mother) Nancy— recently arrived from Aberystwyth for 3 weeks' work, with Nancy repeatedly threatening to return there immediately. They and the Welsh locals refer to it as "Aber"; the English characters use its full name.

Aberystwyth (albeit an alternative universe version) is the setting for the cult Louie Knight series by Malcolm Pryce, which transfers Chandleresque "noir" stories and dialogue to this small seaside town. This alternative reality features many landmarks of Aberystwyth, such as the University and the National Library of Wales, but the social situation is radically altered to more closely resemble the pulp/noir stereotypical "Dirty Town" that the narrative plays off. Most of the humour in the books is derived from the almost seamless juxtaposition of the real Aberystwyth and the fictional, noir Aberystwyth. Various aspects of Welsh culture are reflections of what you might expect to see in reality, but with a pulp twist – for example, prostitutes wear Welsh stovepipe hats.

Stripping Penguins Bare, the book 2 of Michael Carson's Benson Trilogy of comic novels, is set in the town and university in the 1960s.

The local writer Niall Griffiths has set many of his novels here and reflects local slang, settings, and even individuals. Grits and Sheepshagger are set wholly in Aberystwyth, which also features prominently in his other novels such as Kelly and Victor and Stump. He portrays a more gritty side of Aberystwyth.

‘Cofiwch Aberystwyth’ by science fiction writer Val Nolan, is a near-future post-apocalyptic novelette about three young urban explorers visiting Aberystwyth years after a nuclear disaster on the west coast of Wales. It was originally published in Interzone (magazine) and later anthologised in Best of British Science Fiction 2020. The title references the Cofiwch Dryweryn graffiti outside nearby Llanrhystyd, Ceredigion.

 

Television

Y Gwyll (2013–2016), a Welsh-language television programme, and the English-language version Hinterland , broadcast on S4C, BBC One Wales, BBC Four, and syndicated around the world, is set in Aberystwyth. It is filmed in and around the town, often in rural locations.

 

Film

Y Llyfrgell (2017) is an award-winning Welsh language film set in and around the National Library, which was filmed on location in 2016. The 2009 book on which it was based was released in English in 2022.

 

The following people and military units have received the Freedom of the Town of Aberystwyth.

Individuals

1912 – Sir John Williams

1912 – David Davies

1912 – Stuart Rendel

1922 – David Lloyd George

1923 – Lewis Pugh Evans

1923 – Matthew Vaughan-Davies

1923 – Sir Herbert Lewis

1928 – Stanley Baldwin

1936 – Sir David Charles Roberts

1936 – Ernest Vaughan

1951 – Winston Churchill

1956 – Sir David James

2011 – Fritz Pratschke

2015 – Jean Guezennec

 

Military Units

1955 – The Welsh Guards

 

Twinning

Arklow in Wicklow, Republic of Ireland Ireland

Kronberg im Taunus in Hesse Hesse, Germany Germany

Saint-Brieuc in Brittany Brittany, France France

Esquel in Patagonia, Argentina Argentina

Well, the title in our catalogue more or less accurately described this one, but where was it? Thanks to the aptly named derangedlemur, we now know this was the Court House in Sligo Town.

 

The "pub" of the title is Taylor's Cabinet Makers, Upholsterers & Undertakers...

 

Thanks ccferrie for providing link to great article on Sligo Courthouse.

 

Date: February 1879-1883

 

NLI Ref: STP_2410

 

You can also view this image, and many thousands of others, on the NLI’s catalogue at catalogue.nli.ie

American Arcade card.

 

Dorothy Dandridge (1922-1965) was an American film and theatre actress, singer, and dancer. She is perhaps best known for being the first African-American actress to be nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in Carmen Jones (Otto Preminger, 1954). She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959). Dandridge also appeared in a few European films.

 

Dorothy Jean Dandridge was born in, 1922 in Cleveland, Ohio, to Ruby Dandridge (née Ruby Jean Butler), an entertainer, and Cyril H. Dandridge, a cabinet maker and minister. Under the prodding of her mother, Dorothy, and her sister Vivian Dandridge began performing publicly, as the Wonder Children, later The Dandridge Sisters, usually in black Baptist churches throughout the country. Her mother would often join her daughters on stage. During her early career, she appeared in a succession of films, usually in uncredited roles. Her film debut was a bit role in the Marx Brothers comedy, A Day at the Races (Sam Wood, 1937). She also performed as a vocalist in the Cotton Club and the Apollo Theater. Her breakthrough was her title role in the all-black production of Carmen Jones (Otto Preminger, 1954). Dandridge's performance as the sultry title character made her one of Hollywood's first African-American sex symbols. Carmen Jones became a worldwide success, eventually earning over $10 million at the box office and becoming one of the year's highest-earning films.

 

After a three-year absence from film acting, Dorothy Dandridge agreed to appear in the film version of Island in the Sun (Robert Rossen, 1957), opposite an ensemble cast, including James Mason, Harry Belafonte, Joan Fontaine, Joan Collins, and Stephen Boyd. The film was controversial for its time period, and the script was revised numerous times to accommodate the Production Code requirements about interracial relationships. There occurred, however, an extremely intimate loving embrace between Dandridge and Justin that succeeded in not breaching the code. Despite the behind-the-scenes controversy and unfavourable critical reviews, the film was one of the year's biggest successes. Dandridge next starred opposite Curd Jürgens in the Italian production of Tamango (John Berry, 1958). A reluctant Dandridge had agreed to appear in the film only after learning that it focused on a nineteenth-century slave revolt on a cargo ship travelling from Africa to Cuba. However, she nearly withdrew her involvement when the initial script called for her to swim in the nude and spend the majority of the film in a two-piece bathing suit made of rags. When Dandridge threatened to leave the film, the script and her wardrobe were retooled to her liking. In 1959, she was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Porgy and Bess (Otto Preminger, 1959). However, when the film was released, it was critically bashed and failed to recoup its financial investment.

 

Dorothy Dandridge next filmed a low-budget British thriller Malaga (László Benedek, 1960) in which she played a European woman with an Italian name. The film, co-starring Trevor Howard and Edmund Purdom, plotted a jewel robbery and its aftermath. Howard and Dandridge created some strongly understated sexual tension in the film. Malanga was withheld from a theatrical release abroad until 1960 but went unreleased in the United States until 1962. It was her final completed film appearance. Dandridge was married and divorced twice. From 1942 till 1951, she was married to dancer and entertainer Harold Nicholas. They had a daughter, Carolyn Suzanne Nicholas, who was born brain-damaged. In 1959 she married hotel owner Jack Denison. They divorced in 1962 amid financial setbacks and allegations of domestic violence. At this time, Dandridge discovered that the people who were handling her finances had swindled her out of $150,000 and that she was $139,000 in debt for back taxes. In 1965, Dorothy Dandridge died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 42. She is the subject of the HBO biographical film, Introducing Dorothy Dandridge (Martha Coolidge, 1999) with Halle Berry.

 

Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.

 

And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.

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**Washington and Lee University Historic District** - National Register of Historic Places Ref # 71001047, date listed 11/11/1971

 

W and L University campus

 

Lexington, VA (Independent City)

 

A National Historic Landmark (www.nps.gov/subjects/nationalhistoriclandmarks/list-of-nh...).

 

The historic core of Washington and Lee University is situated along a ridge which extends through the western edge of the town of Lexington. The principal feature of this core is a range of brick buildings referred to as the "Colonnade", since the buildings are fronted variously with columns, piers, and pilasters, giving the impression of a continuous colonnade. In the center of the Colonnade is the oldest and largest building of the group, Washington Hall - a three-story, temple-form structure fronted by a provincial hexastyle Roman Doric portico. Washington HaII was erected in 1824; its present roofline and two-story flanking wings were added in 1843. The octagonal Greek-Revival cupola, topped with a wooden statue of George Washington was added in 1844. The statue, carved by a local cabinet-maker, Matthew Kahle, is a fine example of American folk art. (1)

 

References (1) NRHP Nomination Form s3.amazonaws.com/NARAprodstorage/opastorage/live/2/6815/4...

Written on the verso: Mrs. Grow Taylor, Philadelphia (Ida Warren). Grandpa's youngest sister. A good woman.

 

Ida E. Warren was born 18 September 1842 in Ludlow, Vermont, the daughter of Silas Warren (1793-1866) and Belinda Dickinson (1799-1869). Ida grew up on the family farm in Ludlow with her parents and six siblings. In 1860, the family had real estate valued at $3,000 and a personal estate of $600. Ida was married on 30 September 1862 to New York-born Timothy Grow Taylor (1841-1924). Although it was not clear when the couple relocated to Philadelphia, they were living there for the 1880 census. Grow Taylor was a proof reader for the publishing company. Ida Warren Taylor passed away on 20 December 1895 in Philadelphia.

 

Photographer Frederick Gutekunst (25 September 1831 - 27 April 1917) was the son of a German immigrant cabinet maker. He began his career as a daguerreotype artist and became one of Philadelphia's most prominent photograhers, especially during the Civil War era. There is considerable information available on Gutekunst on the net.

Located at the end of a sleepy little cul-de-sac in the leafy north east Melburnian suburb of Fairy Hills is a beautiful pebbledash Arts and Crafts style bungalow. Quiet and unassuming amid its well kept gardens, this bungalow is quite significant historically as it is the creation and home of nationally renowned husband and wife artists Christian and Napier Waller, and is known as the Waller House. Together they designed the house and much of its interior decoration and furnishings. Napier Waller lived in their purpose designed home for some fifty years. What is especially significant about the house is that both it and its contents are quite intact. Napier Waller's studios, examples of his art, that of his two wives and his niece, famous studio potter Klytie Pate, and items connected with his work remain exactly as he left them. Architecturally the house design is innovative in its internal use of space, specifically in the organisation of the studio cum living room and displays a high degree of artistic creativity in the interior decoration.

 

The Waller House in Fairy Hills is so named because it was the residence of Mervyn Napier Waller, the acclaimed artist who gained National fame from his water colours, stained glass, mosaic works and murals and his wife Christian, who was a distinguished artist and designer of stained glass in her own right. In particular Napier Waller's works adorn the Melbourne Town Hall, the Myer Emporium Mural Hall, the Victorian State Library and the Australian War Memorial. The Waller House is a split level house designed by Napier and his first wife Christian who intended the house to be both a home and a workplace. For this the design was conceived to accommodate the tall studies and pieces of the artist's work.

 

The Waller house was built by Phillip Millsom in 1922 and the architectural style of the house is a mixture of Interwar Arts and Crafts, Interwar Old English and Interwar California Bungalow. The house is constructed from reinforced concrete walls with a rough cast pebbledash finish. The roof is steeply pitched with a prominent half timbered gable over the front entrance and has Marseilles pattern terracotta tiles. There are small paned casement windows. There have been several additions to the original design over the years but these have all been sympathetic to the original design.

 

The house is entered from a two sided verandah into an entrance hall, panelled in Tasmanian wood. This has stairs leading to the different levels of the house interior. In one direction the hall leads to a main living hall which was Napier Waller's original studio and later used as the main living room in the house. This room has a high ceiling with casement windows, a musicians’ gallery and a broad brick fireplace flanked by fire-dogs and bellows made by the sculptress Ola Cohn (1892 – 1964). Like many of the other rooms in the house the studio is panelled and floored with Tasmanian hardwood and contains some of the studies for Napier Waller's murals: “The Five Lamps of Learning; the Wise and Foolish Virgins” a mosaic for the University of Western Australia and, “Peace After Victory” a study painting for the State Library of Victoria. Above the panelling the plaster walls are painted in muted colours in wood grain effect. The raftered plaster ceiling has been painted in marble effect with gold leaf. Book shelves, still containing the Wallers’ beautiful books, are built into the panelled walls. Furniture in the room includes a settee with a painted back panel featuring jousting knights, painted by Christian Waller, a leather suite and black bean sideboards and cupboards. This furniture was designed in the nineteen thirties by Napier Waller and by Percy Meldrum and a noted cabinet maker called Goulman. The studio cum hall also contains many ceramic works created by studio potter Klytie Pate who was Christian Waller’s niece and protégée. The entrance hall leads in the other direction to a guest room, known as the “Blue Room”. This was the idea of Napier's wife Christian and has simple built-in glass topped furniture and Napier's murals of the “Labours of Hercules” which include a self portrait of the artist. An alcove section of the room was constructed out of an extension to the verandah. Stairs lead from the entrance hall to the musicians’ gallery which has a window and overlooks the studio cum living room. The kitchen near the studio/hall is panelled and raftered with built-in cupboards conforming to the panelling. The ceiling is stencilled in a fleur-de-lys design by Napier. The dining room lies to the right of the studio cum hall and contains shoulder high panelling and raftered ceilings. It has an angled brick corner fireplace and the walls and ceiling have the same painted treatment as the studio cum living room. The oak dining furniture was designed by Napier. A small den with high window, furnished with leather chairs, opens off the dining room. Opening off the hall to the left is a long rectangular room known as the glass studio. This was added to the house by builder C. Trinck of Hampton in about 1931 and contains Napier Waller's kiln, paintbrushes and stained-glass tools on the benches, and stained glass designs and racks which are still stacked with radiant streaked glass from his work with stained glass windows. A bedroom and bathroom with attic pitched rafter ceiling and casement windows is situated on the upper level of the house. Another bedroom in ship's cabin style with flared wall light fittings and built in bunks opens off this first bedroom.

 

The house backs onto a courtyard enclosed by a long bluestone garden wall. The house is set in a three and a half acre site with cypress hedges and gravelled paths. The garden drops away to a hillside slope with manna gum trees. Set on the slope is a flat roofed studio built in 1937. It has an undercroft beneath a studio room and this contains a lithographic press and a printing press of 1849 for woodcuts and linocuts. This was used by Napier and his first wife Christian to produce prints in the 1930s. Napier was widowed and married his stained glass studio assistant Lorna Reyburn in 1958.

 

The Waller House has recently become famous for yet another reason. The exterior has been used as a backdrop in the ABC/ITV co-production television series, “The Doctor Blake Mysteries” (2013). The house serves as the residence of the program’s lead character, Doctor Lucien Blake (played by Australian actor Craig McLachlan), and the doctor’s 1930s tourer is often seen driving up to or away from the Waller House throughout the series. The Waller House is the only regular backdrop not filmed in the provincial Victorian gold rush city of Ballarat, in which the series is based.

 

The Waller House is still a private residence, even though it was bequeathed to the people of Victoria by Napier Waller under the proviso that it would not revert to state ownership until after the death of his second wife, Lorna. The current leasee of the Waller House is a well known Melbourne antique dealer, who was friends with Lorna Reyburn, and who acts as a loving informal caretaker. He was approached by the Napier Waller Committee of Management and keeps the house neat and tidy, and maintains the garden beautifully. I am very grateful to him for his willingness to open the Waller House, and for allowing me the opportunity to comprehensively photograph this rarely seen gem of Melbourne art, architecture and history.

 

Mervyn Napier Waller (1893 – 1972) was an Australian artist. Born in Penshurst, Victoria, Napier was the son of William Waller, contractor, and his wife Sarah, née Napier. Educated locally until aged 14, he then worked on his father's farm. In 1913 he began studies at the National Gallery schools, Melbourne, and first exhibited water-colours and drawings at the Victorian Artists' Society in 1915. On 31 August of that year he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, and on 21 October at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, married Christian Yandell, a fellow student and artist from Castlemaine. Serving in France from the end of 1916, Waller was seriously wounded in action, and his right arm had to be amputated at the shoulder. Whilst convalescing in France and England Napier learned to write and draw with his left hand. After coming home to Australia he exhibited a series of war sketches in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart between 1918 and 1919 which helped to establish his reputation as a talented artist. Napier continued to paint in water-colour, taking his subjects from mythology and classical legend, but exhibited a group of linocuts in 1923. In 1927 Napier completed his first major mural for the Menzies Hotel, Melbourne. Next year his mural 'Peace after Victory' was installed in the State Library of Victoria. Visiting England and Europe in 1929 to study stained glass, the Wallers travelled in Italy where Napier was deeply impressed by the mosaics in Ravenna and studied mosaic in Venice. He returned to Melbourne in March 1930 and began to work almost exclusively in stained glass and mosaic. In 1931 he completed a great monumental mosaic for the University of Western Australia; two important commissions in Melbourne followed: the mosaic façade for Newspaper House (completed 1933) and murals for the dining hall in the Myer Emporium (completed 1935). During this time he also worked on a number of stained-glass commissions, some in collaboration with his wife, Christian. Between 1939 and 1945 he worked as an illustrator and undertook no major commissions. In 1946 he finished a three-lancet window commemorating the New Guinea martyrs for St Peter's Church, Eastern Hill. In 1952-58 he designed and completed the mosaics and stained glass for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. On 25 January 1958 in a civil ceremony in Melbourne Waller had married Lorna Marion Reyburn, a New Zealand-born artist who had long been his assistant in stained glass.

 

Christian Waller (1894 – 1954) was an Australian artist. Born in Castlemaine, Victoria, Christian was the fifth daughter and youngest of seven children of William Edward Yandell a Victorian-born plasterer, and his wife Emily, née James, who came from England. Christian began her art studies in 1905 under Carl Steiner at the Castlemaine School of Mines. The family moved in 1910 to Melbourne where Christian attended the National Gallery schools. She studied under Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall, won several student prizes, exhibited (1913-22) with the Victorian Artists Society and illustrated publications. On 21 October 1915 at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, she married her former fellow-student Mervyn Napier Waller; they were childless, but adopted Christian’s niece Klytie Pate, in all but a legal sense. During the 1920s Christian Waller became a leading book illustrator, winning acclaim as the first Australian artist to illustrate Alice in Wonderland (1924). Her work reflected Classical, Medieval, Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau influences. She also produced woodcuts and linocuts, including fine bookplates. From about 1928 she designed stained-glass windows. The Wallers travelled to London in 1929 to investigate the manufacture of stained glass at Whall & Whall Ltd's premises. Returning to Australia via Italy, they studied the mosaics at Ravenna and Venice. Christian signed and exhibited her work under her maiden name until 1930, but thereafter used her married name. In the 1930s Waller produced her finest prints, book designs and stained glass, her work being more Art Deco in style and showing her interest in theosophy. She created stained-glass windows for a number of churches—especially for those designed by Louis Williams—in Melbourne, Geelong, and rural centres in New South Wales. Sometimes she collaborated with her husband, both being recognized as among Australia's leading stained-glass artists. Estranged from Napier, Christian went to New York in 1939. In 1940 she returned to the home she shared with her husband in Fairy Hills where she immersed herself in her work and became increasingly reclusive. In 1942 she painted a large mural for Christ Church, Geelong; by 1948 she had completed more than fifty stained-glass windows.

 

Klytie Pate (1912 – 2010) was an Australian Studio Potter who emerged as an innovator in the use of unusual glazes and the extensive incising, piercing and ornamentation of earthenware pottery. She was one of a small group of Melbourne art potters which included Marguerite Mahood and Reg Preston who were pioneers in the 1930‘s of ceramic art nationwide. Her early work was strongly influenced by her aunt, the artist and printmaker, Christian Waller. Klytie’s father remarried when she was 13, so Klytie went to live with her aunt, Christian Waller. Christian and her husband Napier Waller encouraged her interest in art and printmaking. She spent time at their studio in Fairy Hills, and thus her work reflected Art Deco, Art Nouveau, the Pre Raphaelites, Egyptian art, Greek mythology, and Theosophy. Klytie made several plaster masks that were displayed by the Wallers in their home and experimented with linocut, a medium used by Christian in her printmaking. Her aunt further encouraged Klytie by arranging for her to study modelling under Ola Cohn, the Melbourne sculptor. Klytie became renowned for her high quality, geometric Art Deco designed pottery which is eagerly sought after today by museums, art galleries, collectors and auction houses.

 

Fairy Hills is a small north eastern suburb of Melbourne. Leafy, with streets lined with banks of agapanthus, it is an area well known for its exclusivity, affluence and artistic connections. It was designed along the lines of London’s garden suburbs, such as Hampstead and Highgate, where houses and gardens blended together to create an informal, village like feel. Many of Fairy Hills’ houses have been designed by well known architects of the early Twentieth Century such as Walter Burley Griffin (1876 – 1937) and have gardens landscaped by designers like Edna Walling (1895 – 1973). Fairy Hills is the result of a subdivision of an 1840s farm called “Fairy Hills” which was commenced in the years just before the First World War (1914 – 1918). “Lucerne Farm”, a late 1830s farm associated with Governor La Trobe, was also nearby.

  

On June 23, 2019, The Madison Historical Society's 6th Annual Tour of Remarkable Homes of 5 unique Madison Properties was held from 11 to 4. See flic.kr/s/aHsmDYR4zd for more scenes from this event.

Built on a corner lot, the charming early-19th-century yellow colonial with black shutters is known as the Zenas Wilcox House. Visitors enter the home through a mudroom and eat-in kitchen that were added in the mid-1980s.

The current owner, wanting the new spaces to flow with the antique character of the house, used beams from an Ohio barn to support the addition’s vaulted ceiling. She used reclaimed chestnut boards from a Connecticut farmhouse to create its floor. The cover of a book of family recipes, published by the owner’s grandmother, inspired a brick surround that houses a stove that divides the space. The custom kitchen was built by local cabinet maker Thomas Korn. Much forethought and attention to detail was given to the design and use of the space. The detail of his artistry is apparent everywhere, as seen in the small cabinet above the poured-concrete counters; a stowaway space for small appliances, it features a lovely reticulated pull-down shelf lined with tin.

The dining room was completely reimagined by the owner to reflect the home’s historic past. Again, Korn worked his magic. He installed a Federal-style corner cabinet that houses a collection of antique porcelain, and he made raised-panel floating millwork, painted in a traditional grey/blue. The property is situated across from a horse pond where locals enjoying frogging in the warmer months and ice skating in the winter. Located on just over an acre of land, the home also features a heated pool, a sunroom, and a porch that utilizes stone repurposed from an earlier foundation.

(Photo credit Bob Gundersen www.flickr.com/photos/bobphoto51/albums)

The collection "Chambre de la Reine" (Queen's bedroom) contains all the furniture Marie Antoinette used in her bedroom at château de Petit Trianon. The Queen wanted to make the Trianon her personal place of refuge, and that reflects on the furniture as well. The bucolic theme (pleasant aspects of the countryside and country life) is overpowering, and can be seen on armchairs, chairs, taborets and fire screen. All that creates very intimate and comfortable atmosphere in the room.

 

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The collection contains:

 

Bed, Armchair, Chair, Taboret and Fire Screen

Contains both PG and Adult versions

 

New furniture was ordered for the Queen's bedroom in 1787. The design must have been done by Jean-Démosthène Dugourc. The work went to carpenter Georges Jacob, who was able to bring to life the particularly original drawing made of wheat tied by ribbons, around which are wrapped branches of ivy and jasmine. Clusters of lily of the valley complete the decor as well as pine cones, at the base of the feet and at the top of the backrest. The natural paint is due to a real painter, Chaillot de Prusse. The furniture have also retained original upholstery, covered with a basin embroidered in the workshops of the widow Desfarges in Lyon. The frame is made of garlands of roses and in the center is bouquets of wildflowers. On the base of the fireplace screen, two heads of fauna reinforce the bucolic theme.

 

Riesener Mechanical Table

 

Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France, used this exquisite writing table at the Petit Trianon, the small palace she used as a retreat from the court at Versailles. An intimate piece of furniture from the Queen's private domain, the table was commissioned from her favourite cabinet-maker Jean-Henri Riesener. The Queen often had lunch in her bed, sometimes standing on a small table opposite her sofa. In her bed, she probably used one of her "mechanical tables" which she ordered from Riesener.

 

Although Riesener made a number of small writing tables for Marie-Antoinette and other ladies at court, the extremely fine modelling of the gilt-bronze mounts sets this table apart from the others. Composed of incredibly realistic flowers carefully chased, gilded and burnished so that they shimmer in the light, the mounts can be compared to the fineness of jewellery.

 

The central oval reserve of the table-top and the panels on the four sides are decorated with intricate marquetry trophies of love and music, while geometric ‘fretwork’ marquetry fills the remaining table-top and lower shelf. The front frieze pulls out to reveal a writing slide, which can be adjusted to the preferred angle, beneath which is a drawer. A subsidiary drawer contains silvered compartments for writing implements and can be pulled out to the right when the writing slide is in use.

 

The table could be used for various activities such as eating and writing and also reading and dressing, since the central panel of the top can be lifted to form a lectern and reversed to reveal a mirror. Pressing buttons along the front edge of the table releases the hinged lids to six compartments for the storage of cosmetic and writing equipment.

 

(There are two models of this table includes. First one has the mechanism of the table open, and the second on is closed.)

 

Fireplaces

Contains both versions

 

This beautiful fireplace was the centerpiece of for Marie Antoinette's bedroom in Petit Trianon. Made out of excepanly carved Bardiglio marble, it is decorated with garlands of flowers, to reinforce the bucolic theme of the whole room.

 

Mirror

 

This delightful mirror is located on three opposite sides of Marie Antoinette's bedroom in Petit Trianon. Simple, yet elegant mirror, was gilded and decorated in the central part with two olive branches tied up with a ribbon. On the upper sides we can see the scrolls of foliage to enhance the decoration even more.

Mirrors in the 18th century were used to enlarge the space and make it more open. The scones and candelabras was placed next or in front of them, to enhance the candle light and make the room more bright.

 

Sconce

 

Music was one of Marie-Antoinette’s lifelong diversions. She was taught to perform and sing when young in Vienna, where the opera composer Christoph Willibald Gluck was her tutor. She amused herself with music several hours a day at the French court and was a devotee of the opera. The queen’s enjoyment of music is reflected in the design of these wall lights, which were ordered probably in 1787 or the following year for her use at the Château de Petit Trianon.

 

Suspended from a gilt-bronze ribbon tied in a bowknot, and the arms are shaped like horns.

 

Gilt bronze was used extensively for different types of lighting, ranging from freestanding candlesticks and candelabra to hanging chandeliers and lanterns. Sconces were usually placed on either side of a mirror so that the flames of their candles were reflected and multiplied in the glass.

 

Console and Sewing table

 

To accompany new furniture for Marie Antoinette's bedroom in Petit Trianon, "le Garde-Meuble de la Reine" (organisation of the French royal household responsible for the order, upkeep, storage and repair of all the movable furniture and objects in the royal palaces) ordered cabinetmaker Ferdinand Schwerdfeger a console, chest of drawers and a sewing table in the same spirit. Made in flamed mahogany, these pieces of furniture are decorated with gilded bronze of extraordinary quality. The main elements evoke basketry work, notably the capitals at the top of the feet. An interlacing of sunflower flowers and thistles adorns the top panel.

 

These small but often beautifully conceived tables were used in parlors, sitting rooms, and bedrooms. Generally they had large amounts of space and a full set of sewing tools. Nearby there will be a chair and a waste bin.

 

Vase Candelabra

 

Candelabra became more and more elaborate during the course of the eighteenth century and were frequently cast of gilt bronze. Monumental in size, this pair meant to hold seven candles is very complex in its design. The selection of bronze ornaments is unusual, and attention has been lavished on their casting, chasing, and gilding, which is partly burnished and partly left matte. The vase baluster body is finely painted and gilded, with bouquets of flowers, flanked by lion mask handles.

  

Available for purchase at the Louvre museum:

maps.secondlife.com/secondlife/Sapphos%20Garden/176/159/3198

When I moved to Northern British Columbia, my friends were puzzled. “What will you do up there?” they asked. “Once you’ve seen one tree, haven’t you seen them all?”

 

In the cabin, my life is small and routine, but it gives me time to think. I wonder if my old friends find the same sense of spaciousness in their lives. In the city they’re always trying to enclose the space, to make it rarer. The feeling of constriction drives me to find somewhere I can be alone.

 

My first glimpse of the cabin is heralded by flowers. As I follow the path through the trees the air is scented with Christmas. The ground is springy and yielding, paved with pine needles. The garden is in bloom with daffodils, tulips and Bethlehem sage, attracting hummingbirds. And further on, the cabin rises as if borne up by the forget-me-nots.

 

Initially I wonder if I’ll get “bushed” and lose my mind in some bizarre way. Moving from downtown Toronto to a remote mountainside has to provoke some change. But a subtler transformation takes place. The boundary separating me from everything else blurs, and I see that one tree is not the same as any other.

 

I am the latest in a lineage of people to come here looking for renewal. The Vetters, who gave their name to this mountain, arrived after the First World War and built the cabin. I have seen a picture of them, dour Scandinavians standing in the snow in their shirtsleeves, frowning at the camera. Weary of her parents’ strict religiosity, their daughter Lily poisoned herself in 1922, giving her name to the cabin: Lilyhome. In the light of the kerosene lamp it is easy to evoke the Vetters sitting together, their heads bowed at grace.

 

From the 1930s on, the cabin was used as a weather station. The secluded Nass Valley attracted draft dodgers and back-to-the-landers, and in the ’60s a hippie couple bought the cabin. They put an addition on it, built a greenhouse and won awards in Harrowsmith for Best Northern Garden. They grew corn, asparagus, wheat, potatoes, strawberries, roses, currants and pot. When they left, the cabin was sold to a German cabinet-maker from the Black Forest who is pleased to have me maintain the property. I find it easy to live here. I bake bread in the wood stove, learn how to make jams and pickles, and soon forget how life was in Toronto.

 

I become increasingly self-absorbed as the summer progresses. Apart from two trips by bicycle into New Aiyansh, once to buy the few things I can’t grow, and once to find my dogs, who’d packed up with some half-wild Reserve animals, I haven’t seen another person in three months. I’ve stopped winding the clock and noticing what day it is. I don’t want to see other people anymore. The assault on my senses would be excruciating.

 

My attention is tuned to other things: each morning’s aerial ballet of bats streaming through the air like shards of ribbon, the clouds, pink and orange, floating by at twilight. The phosphorescent lichens, families of puffballs, and rimpled, velvety mushrooms smelling of cinnamon that grow from the rainforest floor.

 

Every day I take my dogs for walks far into the woods, discovering groves of waist-high ferns, and iridescent-headed wood ducks on the Tseax River. One day, I find a crumbling one-room cabin. I am afraid to approach it in case there is someone inside. But the cabin is abandoned. On a warped shelf is an ancient box of matches and a hinged tin. Part of the floor has been dug up, probably by some animal, but I have a disturbing sense of some necessity compelling the long-ago inhabitant to do it. Always on the edge of thought, I fear the solitude will make me crazy. I leave the ruined cabin quickly, lest any malevolent urge, lingering from the past, infects me.

 

The summer is scorchingly hot. In accord with the custom up here, I don’t lock the cabin. As soon as the day gets warm, I don’t wear any clothes. For weeks, buried memories have been playing themselves out in my mind, a nonstop tour of past indignities. I obsess about the unfairness of having to leave a New Year’s party to be home by midnight when I was fifteen. Nothing suppresses the thought except singing Jerusalem at the top of my lungs. Oh good, I think, I am finally going crazy.

 

Suddenly the memories dissipate, leaving me more aware of the present than I have ever been. It is like being soothed by an enormous pair of hands. I run outside and gape when the cottonwoods release their fluff. I rise early to sit outside in stillness and see how the dew intensifies all colours.

 

Someone is pounding on the door. I scurry for something to wear. A giant of a man is standing in my kitchen, a naked axe slung over his shoulder. “Where’s your husband?” he demands. I answer slowly, hoping to give the right answer, to keep on living. I have been awaiting a vision, maybe Lily Vetter as Lady Macbeth, or a dead Nisga’a chief in full regalia. But this huge man in the middle of the afternoon, talking about carrying flares to scare the bears, is not something I would have imagined.

 

The next day, a woman like a china teacup walks up the path and apologizes for her husband’s sense of humour. We drink tea. She sketches, I knit. I am amazed at how eager I am to talk, how easy it is, even after five months of solitude.

 

I don’t live in that place anymore. I am back to trying to ignore the too many sensations clamouring for my attention. My daily life, measured by clocks, lived in clothes, is like that. The friends who called me Holly Hobbie when I left Toronto now think I’m cool. But I don’t want to talk about what it was like to live up there. Maybe I was crazy, in a way, when I lived there. But it was mine, and I don’t want to share it, whatever it was.

 

Lilyhome, a historic log house, built in 1910.

Written on the versos of both CDV’s: Anna W. Rawson. The CDV on the left was by N.R. Wright, 47 Westminster Street, Providence; the CDV on the right was by A.H. Messinger, 271 Westminster Street, Providence.

 

Anna Whitman Rawson was born circa 1840 in Providence, Rhode Island, the daughter of George Burrill Rawson (1805-1895) and Sarah Cook (1806-1876); the couple had at least seven children. In 1850, Ann was living with her parents and five siblings in Providence. Her father, George Rawson, was in a long line of cabinet makers that started with Grindal Rawson (1719-1803). In censuses from 1860 through 1880, Anna lived with her parents in Providence; her sister Martha, born circa 1845, was also living with her parents. Sometime after her father’s death, Anna relocated to Pawtucket, Rhode Island, where she lived with her sister through the 1910 census. Anna Whitman Rawson passed away on 11 August 1918.

 

Photographer Albert H. Messinger was born circa 1829 in Rhode Island, the son of Albert Messinger (1803-1885). In 1850, Albert was living in Providence, Rhode Island with his father, his stepmother, Celia Champlain, and two brothers. He was listed as a jeweler. On 9 February 1851, Albert married Susan E. Cochran (born circa 1835). In 1860, the couple, and two children, were living in Providence; the family had real estate valued at $3,200 and Albert was still a jeweler. It appears that Albert's photography career was short-lived. In 1866, he had a studio at 271 Westminster Street. From August to December 1866, he had income from photography of $358; in December alone, the Masters Brothers had income from their Providence studio of $1,096. In later Providence directories Albert was listed as a jeweler. Albert H. Messinger passed away on 12 January 1889.

Located at the end of a sleepy little cul-de-sac in the leafy north east Melburnian suburb of Fairy Hills is a beautiful pebbledash Arts and Crafts style bungalow. Quiet and unassuming amid its well kept gardens, this bungalow is quite significant historically as it is the creation and home of nationally renowned husband and wife artists Christian and Napier Waller, and is known as the Waller House. Together they designed the house and much of its interior decoration and furnishings. Napier Waller lived in their purpose designed home for some fifty years. What is especially significant about the house is that both it and its contents are quite intact. Napier Waller's studios, examples of his art, that of his two wives and his niece, famous studio potter Klytie Pate, and items connected with his work remain exactly as he left them. Architecturally the house design is innovative in its internal use of space, specifically in the organisation of the studio cum living room and displays a high degree of artistic creativity in the interior decoration.

 

The Waller House in Fairy Hills is so named because it was the residence of Mervyn Napier Waller, the acclaimed artist who gained National fame from his water colours, stained glass, mosaic works and murals and his wife Christian, who was a distinguished artist and designer of stained glass in her own right. In particular Napier Waller's works adorn the Melbourne Town Hall, the Myer Emporium Mural Hall, the Victorian State Library and the Australian War Memorial. The Waller House is a split level house designed by Napier and his first wife Christian who intended the house to be both a home and a workplace. For this the design was conceived to accommodate the tall studies and pieces of the artist's work.

 

The Waller house was built by Phillip Millsom in 1922 and the architectural style of the house is a mixture of Interwar Arts and Crafts, Interwar Old English and Interwar California Bungalow. The house is constructed from reinforced concrete walls with a rough cast pebbledash finish. The roof is steeply pitched with a prominent half timbered gable over the front entrance and has Marseilles pattern terracotta tiles. There are small paned casement windows. There have been several additions to the original design over the years but these have all been sympathetic to the original design.

 

The house is entered from a two sided verandah into an entrance hall, panelled in Tasmanian wood. This has stairs leading to the different levels of the house interior. In one direction the hall leads to a main living hall which was Napier Waller's original studio and later used as the main living room in the house. This room has a high ceiling with casement windows, a musicians’ gallery and a broad brick fireplace flanked by fire-dogs and bellows made by the sculptress Ola Cohn (1892 – 1964). Like many of the other rooms in the house the studio is panelled and floored with Tasmanian hardwood and contains some of the studies for Napier Waller's murals: “The Five Lamps of Learning; the Wise and Foolish Virgins” a mosaic for the University of Western Australia and, “Peace After Victory” a study painting for the State Library of Victoria. Above the panelling the plaster walls are painted in muted colours in wood grain effect. The raftered plaster ceiling has been painted in marble effect with gold leaf. Book shelves, still containing the Wallers’ beautiful books, are built into the panelled walls. Furniture in the room includes a settee with a painted back panel featuring jousting knights, painted by Christian Waller, a leather suite and black bean sideboards and cupboards. This furniture was designed in the nineteen thirties by Napier Waller and by Percy Meldrum and a noted cabinet maker called Goulman. The studio cum hall also contains many ceramic works created by studio potter Klytie Pate who was Christian Waller’s niece and protégée. The entrance hall leads in the other direction to a guest room, known as the “Blue Room”. This was the idea of Napier's wife Christian and has simple built-in glass topped furniture and Napier's murals of the “Labours of Hercules” which include a self portrait of the artist. An alcove section of the room was constructed out of an extension to the verandah. Stairs lead from the entrance hall to the musicians’ gallery which has a window and overlooks the studio cum living room. The kitchen near the studio/hall is panelled and raftered with built-in cupboards conforming to the panelling. The ceiling is stencilled in a fleur-de-lys design by Napier. The dining room lies to the right of the studio cum hall and contains shoulder high panelling and raftered ceilings. It has an angled brick corner fireplace and the walls and ceiling have the same painted treatment as the studio cum living room. The oak dining furniture was designed by Napier. A small den with high window, furnished with leather chairs, opens off the dining room. Opening off the hall to the left is a long rectangular room known as the glass studio. This was added to the house by builder C. Trinck of Hampton in about 1931 and contains Napier Waller's kiln, paintbrushes and stained-glass tools on the benches, and stained glass designs and racks which are still stacked with radiant streaked glass from his work with stained glass windows. A bedroom and bathroom with attic pitched rafter ceiling and casement windows is situated on the upper level of the house. Another bedroom in ship's cabin style with flared wall light fittings and built in bunks opens off this first bedroom.

 

The house backs onto a courtyard enclosed by a long bluestone garden wall. The house is set in a three and a half acre site with cypress hedges and gravelled paths. The garden drops away to a hillside slope with manna gum trees. Set on the slope is a flat roofed studio built in 1937. It has an undercroft beneath a studio room and this contains a lithographic press and a printing press of 1849 for woodcuts and linocuts. This was used by Napier and his first wife Christian to produce prints in the 1930s. Napier was widowed and married his stained glass studio assistant Lorna Reyburn in 1958.

 

The Waller House has recently become famous for yet another reason. The exterior has been used as a backdrop in the ABC/ITV co-production television series, “The Doctor Blake Mysteries” (2013). The house serves as the residence of the program’s lead character, Doctor Lucien Blake (played by Australian actor Craig McLachlan), and the doctor’s 1930s tourer is often seen driving up to or away from the Waller House throughout the series. The Waller House is the only regular backdrop not filmed in the provincial Victorian gold rush city of Ballarat, in which the series is based.

 

The Waller House is still a private residence, even though it was bequeathed to the people of Victoria by Napier Waller under the proviso that it would not revert to state ownership until after the death of his second wife, Lorna. The current leasee of the Waller House is a well known Melbourne antique dealer, who was friends with Lorna Reyburn, and who acts as a loving informal caretaker. He was approached by the Napier Waller Committee of Management and keeps the house neat and tidy, and maintains the garden beautifully. I am very grateful to him for his willingness to open the Waller House, and for allowing me the opportunity to comprehensively photograph this rarely seen gem of Melbourne art, architecture and history.

 

Mervyn Napier Waller (1893 – 1972) was an Australian artist. Born in Penshurst, Victoria, Napier was the son of William Waller, contractor, and his wife Sarah, née Napier. Educated locally until aged 14, he then worked on his father's farm. In 1913 he began studies at the National Gallery schools, Melbourne, and first exhibited water-colours and drawings at the Victorian Artists' Society in 1915. On 31 August of that year he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, and on 21 October at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, married Christian Yandell, a fellow student and artist from Castlemaine. Serving in France from the end of 1916, Waller was seriously wounded in action, and his right arm had to be amputated at the shoulder. Whilst convalescing in France and England Napier learned to write and draw with his left hand. After coming home to Australia he exhibited a series of war sketches in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart between 1918 and 1919 which helped to establish his reputation as a talented artist. Napier continued to paint in water-colour, taking his subjects from mythology and classical legend, but exhibited a group of linocuts in 1923. In 1927 Napier completed his first major mural for the Menzies Hotel, Melbourne. Next year his mural 'Peace after Victory' was installed in the State Library of Victoria. Visiting England and Europe in 1929 to study stained glass, the Wallers travelled in Italy where Napier was deeply impressed by the mosaics in Ravenna and studied mosaic in Venice. He returned to Melbourne in March 1930 and began to work almost exclusively in stained glass and mosaic. In 1931 he completed a great monumental mosaic for the University of Western Australia; two important commissions in Melbourne followed: the mosaic façade for Newspaper House (completed 1933) and murals for the dining hall in the Myer Emporium (completed 1935). During this time he also worked on a number of stained-glass commissions, some in collaboration with his wife, Christian. Between 1939 and 1945 he worked as an illustrator and undertook no major commissions. In 1946 he finished a three-lancet window commemorating the New Guinea martyrs for St Peter's Church, Eastern Hill. In 1952-58 he designed and completed the mosaics and stained glass for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. On 25 January 1958 in a civil ceremony in Melbourne Waller had married Lorna Marion Reyburn, a New Zealand-born artist who had long been his assistant in stained glass.

 

Christian Waller (1894 – 1954) was an Australian artist. Born in Castlemaine, Victoria, Christian was the fifth daughter and youngest of seven children of William Edward Yandell a Victorian-born plasterer, and his wife Emily, née James, who came from England. Christian began her art studies in 1905 under Carl Steiner at the Castlemaine School of Mines. The family moved in 1910 to Melbourne where Christian attended the National Gallery schools. She studied under Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall, won several student prizes, exhibited (1913-22) with the Victorian Artists Society and illustrated publications. On 21 October 1915 at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, she married her former fellow-student Mervyn Napier Waller; they were childless, but adopted Christian’s niece Klytie Pate, in all but a legal sense. During the 1920s Christian Waller became a leading book illustrator, winning acclaim as the first Australian artist to illustrate Alice in Wonderland (1924). Her work reflected Classical, Medieval, Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau influences. She also produced woodcuts and linocuts, including fine bookplates. From about 1928 she designed stained-glass windows. The Wallers travelled to London in 1929 to investigate the manufacture of stained glass at Whall & Whall Ltd's premises. Returning to Australia via Italy, they studied the mosaics at Ravenna and Venice. Christian signed and exhibited her work under her maiden name until 1930, but thereafter used her married name. In the 1930s Waller produced her finest prints, book designs and stained glass, her work being more Art Deco in style and showing her interest in theosophy. She created stained-glass windows for a number of churches—especially for those designed by Louis Williams—in Melbourne, Geelong, and rural centres in New South Wales. Sometimes she collaborated with her husband, both being recognized as among Australia's leading stained-glass artists. Estranged from Napier, Christian went to New York in 1939. In 1940 she returned to the home she shared with her husband in Fairy Hills where she immersed herself in her work and became increasingly reclusive. In 1942 she painted a large mural for Christ Church, Geelong; by 1948 she had completed more than fifty stained-glass windows.

 

Klytie Pate (1912 – 2010) was an Australian Studio Potter who emerged as an innovator in the use of unusual glazes and the extensive incising, piercing and ornamentation of earthenware pottery. She was one of a small group of Melbourne art potters which included Marguerite Mahood and Reg Preston who were pioneers in the 1930‘s of ceramic art nationwide. Her early work was strongly influenced by her aunt, the artist and printmaker, Christian Waller. Klytie’s father remarried when she was 13, so Klytie went to live with her aunt, Christian Waller. Christian and her husband Napier Waller encouraged her interest in art and printmaking. She spent time at their studio in Fairy Hills, and thus her work reflected Art Deco, Art Nouveau, the Pre Raphaelites, Egyptian art, Greek mythology, and Theosophy. Klytie made several plaster masks that were displayed by the Wallers in their home and experimented with linocut, a medium used by Christian in her printmaking. Her aunt further encouraged Klytie by arranging for her to study modelling under Ola Cohn, the Melbourne sculptor. Klytie became renowned for her high quality, geometric Art Deco designed pottery which is eagerly sought after today by museums, art galleries, collectors and auction houses.

 

Fairy Hills is a small north eastern suburb of Melbourne. Leafy, with streets lined with banks of agapanthus, it is an area well known for its exclusivity, affluence and artistic connections. It was designed along the lines of London’s garden suburbs, such as Hampstead and Highgate, where houses and gardens blended together to create an informal, village like feel. Many of Fairy Hills’ houses have been designed by well known architects of the early Twentieth Century such as Walter Burley Griffin (1876 – 1937) and have gardens landscaped by designers like Edna Walling (1895 – 1973). Fairy Hills is the result of a subdivision of an 1840s farm called “Fairy Hills” which was commenced in the years just before the First World War (1914 – 1918). “Lucerne Farm”, a late 1830s farm associated with Governor La Trobe, was also nearby.

  

Henry Mansion

20 S. Eastern Ave.

Built in 1873

 

Railroad magnate, Jacob A. Henry built his imposing mansion on Eastern Avenue, which was then referred to as "Silk Stocking Row." He employed a master craftsman from Germany along with three cabinet- makers to fashion the elaborate carved interior. It took three years to complete and has 16,800 square feet consisting of over 40 rooms.

 

The Jacob Henry Mansion won the Architecture Award at the American Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia in 1876, and is claimed to be the largest and best example of Renaissance Revival architecture still standing in the state of Illinois.

Dumfries House is one of Britain’s most beautiful stately homes and best kept heritage secrets.

Saved by the intervention of HRH the Prince of Wales in 2007, Dumfries House combines the architecture of Robert Adam with the furniture of Thomas Chippendale and leading 18th century Scottish cabinet makers. The house and original contents, which include nearly 10% of Chippendale’s surviving work, represent one of the most important documents of the Scottish Enlightenment. Recently having been fastidiously restored to its original splendour, the house is open to the public all year round.

The Dumfries House Estate retains much of the original 18th century landscape design.

Cabinet Maker, Black Creek Pioneer Village, Toronto

Olympus mju 9010 - f/3- 1/30sec - 5mm - ISO 100

 

Wall in one of the houses of the Gervasuti Foundation, an Art Gallery, settled at Fontamenta Sant’Ana, Castello 995 (Via Garibaldi), 30122 Venezia (Venice), Italia (Italy).

 

During the year here are several art exhibitions, and also always part of the Venice Biennale art exhibition is accommodated here.

 

Venice offers a variety of places to display art: converted palaces, white-walled galleries and old warehouses. One of my favorites is the Gervasuti Foundation, a combined set of rough houses in the Castello district.

 

The rugged, cobbled-together houses that make up the Gervasuti Foundation are a clear departure from the ornate, elaborate palazzos that hold art museums throughout the city. The area of Castello, where the Gervasuti Foundation is located, is the oldest community in Venice known for its wood craft and shipbuilding workshops. The site of the Foundation was the Gervasuti family’s artisan cabinet-maker and joinery workshop.

 

Custom kitchen makeover and dining in a mobile home located in Ellenton, FL

by The Master Cabinet Maker inc.

www.themastercabinetmaker.com

Name: William Shaw

Arrested for: Frequenting

Arrested at: North Shields Police Station

Arrested on: 15 August 1904

Tyne and Wear Archives ref: DX1388-1-55-William Shaw

 

The Shields Daily Gazette for 8 August 1904 reports:

 

"REMANDED FOR INQUIRIES

 

At North Shields, George Williams (32), a pugilist, of Newcastle, and William Shaw (45), a cabinet maker, Newcastle, were charged with frequenting the Electric Tram Cars between North Shields and Whitley for the purpose of committing a felony on Sunday night. Mr G.W. Chapman defended. The magistrates remanded the accused for eight days for enquiries to be made".

 

You can see a mugshot of Shaw's accomplice here www.flickr.com/photos/twm_news/18153140791/.

 

These images are a selection from an album of photographs of prisoners brought before the North Shields Police Court between 1902 and 1916 in the collection of Tyne & Wear Archives (TWA ref DX1388/1).

 

Copyright) We're happy for you to share this digital image within the spirit of The Commons. Please cite 'Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums' when reusing. Certain restrictions on high quality reproductions and commercial use of the original physical version apply though; if you're unsure please email archives@twmuseums.org.uk.

On June 23, 2019, The Madison Historical Society's 6th Annual Tour of Remarkable Homes of 5 unique Madison Properties was held from 11 to 4. See flic.kr/s/aHsmDYR4zd for more scenes from this event.

Built on a corner lot, the charming early-19th-century yellow colonial with black shutters is known as the Zenas Wilcox House. Visitors enter the home through a mudroom and eat-in kitchen that were added in the mid-1980s.

The current owner, wanting the new spaces to flow with the antique character of the house, used beams from an Ohio barn to support the addition’s vaulted ceiling. She used reclaimed chestnut boards from a Connecticut farmhouse to create its floor. The cover of a book of family recipes, published by the owner’s grandmother, inspired a brick surround that houses a stove that divides the space. The custom kitchen was built by local cabinet maker Thomas Korn. Much forethought and attention to detail was given to the design and use of the space. The detail of his artistry is apparent everywhere, as seen in the small cabinet above the poured-concrete counters; a stowaway space for small appliances, it features a lovely reticulated pull-down shelf lined with tin.

The dining room was completely reimagined by the owner to reflect the home’s historic past. Again, Korn worked his magic. He installed a Federal-style corner cabinet that houses a collection of antique porcelain, and he made raised-panel floating millwork, painted in a traditional grey/blue. The property is situated across from a horse pond where locals enjoying frogging in the warmer months and ice skating in the winter. Located on just over an acre of land, the home also features a heated pool, a sunroom, and a porch that utilizes stone repurposed from an earlier foundation.

(Photo credit Bob Gundersen www.flickr.com/photos/bobphoto51/albums)

On June 23, 2019, The Madison Historical Society's 6th Annual Tour of Remarkable Homes of 5 unique Madison Properties was held from 11 to 4. See flic.kr/s/aHsmDYR4zd for more scenes from this event.

Built on a corner lot, the charming early-19th-century yellow colonial with black shutters is known as the Zenas Wilcox House. Visitors enter the home through a mudroom and eat-in kitchen that were added in the mid-1980s.

The current owner, wanting the new spaces to flow with the antique character of the house, used beams from an Ohio barn to support the addition’s vaulted ceiling. She used reclaimed chestnut boards from a Connecticut farmhouse to create its floor. The cover of a book of family recipes, published by the owner’s grandmother, inspired a brick surround that houses a stove that divides the space. The custom kitchen was built by local cabinet maker Thomas Korn. Much forethought and attention to detail was given to the design and use of the space. The detail of his artistry is apparent everywhere, as seen in the small cabinet above the poured-concrete counters; a stowaway space for small appliances, it features a lovely reticulated pull-down shelf lined with tin.

The dining room was completely reimagined by the owner to reflect the home’s historic past. Again, Korn worked his magic. He installed a Federal-style corner cabinet that houses a collection of antique porcelain, and he made raised-panel floating millwork, painted in a traditional grey/blue. The property is situated across from a horse pond where locals enjoying frogging in the warmer months and ice skating in the winter. Located on just over an acre of land, the home also features a heated pool, a sunroom, and a porch that utilizes stone repurposed from an earlier foundation.

(Photo credit Bob Gundersen www.flickr.com/photos/bobphoto51/albums)

Located at the end of a sleepy little cul-de-sac in the leafy north east Melburnian suburb of Fairy Hills is a beautiful pebbledash Arts and Crafts style bungalow. Quiet and unassuming amid its well kept gardens, this bungalow is quite significant historically as it is the creation and home of nationally renowned husband and wife artists Christian and Napier Waller, and is known as the Waller House. Together they designed the house and much of its interior decoration and furnishings. Napier Waller lived in their purpose designed home for some fifty years. What is especially significant about the house is that both it and its contents are quite intact. Napier Waller's studios, examples of his art, that of his two wives and his niece, famous studio potter Klytie Pate, and items connected with his work remain exactly as he left them. Architecturally the house design is innovative in its internal use of space, specifically in the organisation of the studio cum living room and displays a high degree of artistic creativity in the interior decoration.

 

The Waller House in Fairy Hills is so named because it was the residence of Mervyn Napier Waller, the acclaimed artist who gained National fame from his water colours, stained glass, mosaic works and murals and his wife Christian, who was a distinguished artist and designer of stained glass in her own right. In particular Napier Waller's works adorn the Melbourne Town Hall, the Myer Emporium Mural Hall, the Victorian State Library and the Australian War Memorial. The Waller House is a split level house designed by Napier and his first wife Christian who intended the house to be both a home and a workplace. For this the design was conceived to accommodate the tall studies and pieces of the artist's work.

 

The Waller house was built by Phillip Millsom in 1922 and the architectural style of the house is a mixture of Interwar Arts and Crafts, Interwar Old English and Interwar California Bungalow. The house is constructed from reinforced concrete walls with a rough cast pebbledash finish. The roof is steeply pitched with a prominent half timbered gable over the front entrance and has Marseilles pattern terracotta tiles. There are small paned casement windows. There have been several additions to the original design over the years but these have all been sympathetic to the original design.

 

The house is entered from a two sided verandah into an entrance hall, panelled in Tasmanian wood. This has stairs leading to the different levels of the house interior. In one direction the hall leads to a main living hall which was Napier Waller's original studio and later used as the main living room in the house. This room has a high ceiling with casement windows, a musicians’ gallery and a broad brick fireplace flanked by fire-dogs and bellows made by the sculptress Ola Cohn (1892 – 1964). Like many of the other rooms in the house the studio is panelled and floored with Tasmanian hardwood and contains some of the studies for Napier Waller's murals: “The Five Lamps of Learning; the Wise and Foolish Virgins” a mosaic for the University of Western Australia and, “Peace After Victory” a study painting for the State Library of Victoria. Above the panelling the plaster walls are painted in muted colours in wood grain effect. The raftered plaster ceiling has been painted in marble effect with gold leaf. Book shelves, still containing the Wallers’ beautiful books, are built into the panelled walls. Furniture in the room includes a settee with a painted back panel featuring jousting knights, painted by Christian Waller, a leather suite and black bean sideboards and cupboards. This furniture was designed in the nineteen thirties by Napier Waller and by Percy Meldrum and a noted cabinet maker called Goulman. The studio cum hall also contains many ceramic works created by studio potter Klytie Pate who was Christian Waller’s niece and protégée. The entrance hall leads in the other direction to a guest room, known as the “Blue Room”. This was the idea of Napier's wife Christian and has simple built-in glass topped furniture and Napier's murals of the “Labours of Hercules” which include a self portrait of the artist. An alcove section of the room was constructed out of an extension to the verandah. Stairs lead from the entrance hall to the musicians’ gallery which has a window and overlooks the studio cum living room. The kitchen near the studio/hall is panelled and raftered with built-in cupboards conforming to the panelling. The ceiling is stencilled in a fleur-de-lys design by Napier. The dining room lies to the right of the studio cum hall and contains shoulder high panelling and raftered ceilings. It has an angled brick corner fireplace and the walls and ceiling have the same painted treatment as the studio cum living room. The oak dining furniture was designed by Napier. A small den with high window, furnished with leather chairs, opens off the dining room. Opening off the hall to the left is a long rectangular room known as the glass studio. This was added to the house by builder C. Trinck of Hampton in about 1931 and contains Napier Waller's kiln, paintbrushes and stained-glass tools on the benches, and stained glass designs and racks which are still stacked with radiant streaked glass from his work with stained glass windows. A bedroom and bathroom with attic pitched rafter ceiling and casement windows is situated on the upper level of the house. Another bedroom in ship's cabin style with flared wall light fittings and built in bunks opens off this first bedroom.

 

The house backs onto a courtyard enclosed by a long bluestone garden wall. The house is set in a three and a half acre site with cypress hedges and gravelled paths. The garden drops away to a hillside slope with manna gum trees. Set on the slope is a flat roofed studio built in 1937. It has an undercroft beneath a studio room and this contains a lithographic press and a printing press of 1849 for woodcuts and linocuts. This was used by Napier and his first wife Christian to produce prints in the 1930s. Napier was widowed and married his stained glass studio assistant Lorna Reyburn in 1958.

 

The Waller House has recently become famous for yet another reason. The exterior has been used as a backdrop in the ABC/ITV co-production television series, “The Doctor Blake Mysteries” (2013). The house serves as the residence of the program’s lead character, Doctor Lucien Blake (played by Australian actor Craig McLachlan), and the doctor’s 1930s tourer is often seen driving up to or away from the Waller House throughout the series. The Waller House is the only regular backdrop not filmed in the provincial Victorian gold rush city of Ballarat, in which the series is based.

 

The Waller House is still a private residence, even though it was bequeathed to the people of Victoria by Napier Waller under the proviso that it would not revert to state ownership until after the death of his second wife, Lorna. The current leasee of the Waller House is a well known Melbourne antique dealer, who was friends with Lorna Reyburn, and who acts as a loving informal caretaker. He was approached by the Napier Waller Committee of Management and keeps the house neat and tidy, and maintains the garden beautifully. I am very grateful to him for his willingness to open the Waller House, and for allowing me the opportunity to comprehensively photograph this rarely seen gem of Melbourne art, architecture and history.

 

Mervyn Napier Waller (1893 – 1972) was an Australian artist. Born in Penshurst, Victoria, Napier was the son of William Waller, contractor, and his wife Sarah, née Napier. Educated locally until aged 14, he then worked on his father's farm. In 1913 he began studies at the National Gallery schools, Melbourne, and first exhibited water-colours and drawings at the Victorian Artists' Society in 1915. On 31 August of that year he enlisted in the Australian Imperial Force, and on 21 October at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, married Christian Yandell, a fellow student and artist from Castlemaine. Serving in France from the end of 1916, Waller was seriously wounded in action, and his right arm had to be amputated at the shoulder. Whilst convalescing in France and England Napier learned to write and draw with his left hand. After coming home to Australia he exhibited a series of war sketches in Melbourne, Sydney, Adelaide and Hobart between 1918 and 1919 which helped to establish his reputation as a talented artist. Napier continued to paint in water-colour, taking his subjects from mythology and classical legend, but exhibited a group of linocuts in 1923. In 1927 Napier completed his first major mural for the Menzies Hotel, Melbourne. Next year his mural 'Peace after Victory' was installed in the State Library of Victoria. Visiting England and Europe in 1929 to study stained glass, the Wallers travelled in Italy where Napier was deeply impressed by the mosaics in Ravenna and studied mosaic in Venice. He returned to Melbourne in March 1930 and began to work almost exclusively in stained glass and mosaic. In 1931 he completed a great monumental mosaic for the University of Western Australia; two important commissions in Melbourne followed: the mosaic façade for Newspaper House (completed 1933) and murals for the dining hall in the Myer Emporium (completed 1935). During this time he also worked on a number of stained-glass commissions, some in collaboration with his wife, Christian. Between 1939 and 1945 he worked as an illustrator and undertook no major commissions. In 1946 he finished a three-lancet window commemorating the New Guinea martyrs for St Peter's Church, Eastern Hill. In 1952-58 he designed and completed the mosaics and stained glass for the Hall of Memory at the Australian War Memorial, Canberra. On 25 January 1958 in a civil ceremony in Melbourne Waller had married Lorna Marion Reyburn, a New Zealand-born artist who had long been his assistant in stained glass.

 

Christian Waller (1894 – 1954) was an Australian artist. Born in Castlemaine, Victoria, Christian was the fifth daughter and youngest of seven children of William Edward Yandell a Victorian-born plasterer, and his wife Emily, née James, who came from England. Christian began her art studies in 1905 under Carl Steiner at the Castlemaine School of Mines. The family moved in 1910 to Melbourne where Christian attended the National Gallery schools. She studied under Frederick McCubbin and Bernard Hall, won several student prizes, exhibited (1913-22) with the Victorian Artists Society and illustrated publications. On 21 October 1915 at the manse of St Andrew's Presbyterian Church, Carlton, she married her former fellow-student Mervyn Napier Waller; they were childless, but adopted Christian’s niece Klytie Pate, in all but a legal sense. During the 1920s Christian Waller became a leading book illustrator, winning acclaim as the first Australian artist to illustrate Alice in Wonderland (1924). Her work reflected Classical, Medieval, Pre-Raphaelite and Art Nouveau influences. She also produced woodcuts and linocuts, including fine bookplates. From about 1928 she designed stained-glass windows. The Wallers travelled to London in 1929 to investigate the manufacture of stained glass at Whall & Whall Ltd's premises. Returning to Australia via Italy, they studied the mosaics at Ravenna and Venice. Christian signed and exhibited her work under her maiden name until 1930, but thereafter used her married name. In the 1930s Waller produced her finest prints, book designs and stained glass, her work being more Art Deco in style and showing her interest in theosophy. She created stained-glass windows for a number of churches—especially for those designed by Louis Williams—in Melbourne, Geelong, and rural centres in New South Wales. Sometimes she collaborated with her husband, both being recognized as among Australia's leading stained-glass artists. Estranged from Napier, Christian went to New York in 1939. In 1940 she returned to the home she shared with her husband in Fairy Hills where she immersed herself in her work and became increasingly reclusive. In 1942 she painted a large mural for Christ Church, Geelong; by 1948 she had completed more than fifty stained-glass windows.

 

Klytie Pate (1912 – 2010) was an Australian Studio Potter who emerged as an innovator in the use of unusual glazes and the extensive incising, piercing and ornamentation of earthenware pottery. She was one of a small group of Melbourne art potters which included Marguerite Mahood and Reg Preston who were pioneers in the 1930‘s of ceramic art nationwide. Her early work was strongly influenced by her aunt, the artist and printmaker, Christian Waller. Klytie’s father remarried when she was 13, so Klytie went to live with her aunt, Christian Waller. Christian and her husband Napier Waller encouraged her interest in art and printmaking. She spent time at their studio in Fairy Hills, and thus her work reflected Art Deco, Art Nouveau, the Pre Raphaelites, Egyptian art, Greek mythology, and Theosophy. Klytie made several plaster masks that were displayed by the Wallers in their home and experimented with linocut, a medium used by Christian in her printmaking. Her aunt further encouraged Klytie by arranging for her to study modelling under Ola Cohn, the Melbourne sculptor. Klytie became renowned for her high quality, geometric Art Deco designed pottery which is eagerly sought after today by museums, art galleries, collectors and auction houses.

 

Fairy Hills is a small north eastern suburb of Melbourne. Leafy, with streets lined with banks of agapanthus, it is an area well known for its exclusivity, affluence and artistic connections. It was designed along the lines of London’s garden suburbs, such as Hampstead and Highgate, where houses and gardens blended together to create an informal, village like feel. Many of Fairy Hills’ houses have been designed by well known architects of the early Twentieth Century such as Walter Burley Griffin (1876 – 1937) and have gardens landscaped by designers like Edna Walling (1895 – 1973). Fairy Hills is the result of a subdivision of an 1840s farm called “Fairy Hills” which was commenced in the years just before the First World War (1914 – 1918). “Lucerne Farm”, a late 1830s farm associated with Governor La Trobe, was also nearby.