Joanna Nicholas, curator, Sydney Living Museums. Photo © Stuart Miller for Sydney Living Museums
Joanna Nicholas is Curator in the House Museums Portfolio, responsible for Vaucluse, Elizabeth Bay and Rose Seidler Houses. She is passionate about the immersive experiences house museums can provide for visitors – the power of their collections, gardens and grounds. Continue reading
Detail of advertisement from 'Woman' magazine, February 5th 1945. Meroogal collection_Sydney Living Museums
I’ve been spending time at Meroogal lately as we wrestle with the collection stocktake. This magazine cutting certainly caught our attention! Continue reading
Rose Seidler and Bea Evans in the living room, c1965, Photograph © John Evans, Sydney Living Museums
‘My parents both lived here very happily for 25 years I think.’ Harry Seidler, 2003 [1]
The kitchen and servery at Rose Seidler House Photo © Nicholas Watt for Sydney Living Museums (detail)
We’re ‘thoroughly modern’ here at SLM, with The Morderns: European designers in Sydney and Marion Hall Best: interiors exhibitions in full swing at Museum of Sydney. Modernism came into its own on our shores with European émigré architects, interior designers and furniture makers working in the 1930s to 1960s. Not only did modernism change the way we live, it changed the way we cook and eat. Continue reading
Detail of Many Happy Returns of the Day_engraving after Frith. Rouse Hill House collection, Sydney Living Museums
In the schoolroom at Rouse Hill House an engraving shows a child’s birthday party in full swing – with the very real risk that some of the party-goers will end up on the floor! Continue reading
Pickled lemons, made from Margaret Pearson's Cookery recipes for the people, 1890, in The Colonial Kitchen by Charmaine O'Brien, 2016. Photo © Jacqui Newling
As Charmaine O’Brien points out in her book The Colonial Kitchen, Margaret Pearson’s Lemon Pickle recipe reminds us that the relatively recent trend for ‘Moroccan preserved lemons’ is not new to Australian tables at all. Continue reading
Spring Harvest at Elizabeth Farm. (c) Sydney Living Museums
What a feast we have in store this weekend! The Food & Words Writers’ Festival returns to the Sydney Mint on Saturday 16 September, and on Sunday Elizabeth Farm in Parramatta present our Spring Harvest Festival. Take your pick – or join us for both! Continue reading
Saturday night in a diggers hut (detail) 1865. Nicholas Chevalier in The Australian news for home readers. State Library of Victoria
While we’ve been dishing up small tasty morsels about food in colonial Australia, local Sydney author Charmaine O’Brien has created a banquet of tastes, both culinary and social, in her latest book, The Colonial Kitchen: Australia 1788- 1901. (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016). Taking us from hearth-side cookery in bushman’s huts to the most elegant dining rooms in the land, this book introduces us to homely housewives, servants struggling trying to meet the culinary needs of the squattocracy, influential cookery writers and entrepreneurial restaurateurs. Continue reading
Sauce ladle handle in fiddle and shell pattern. Photo (c) Scott Hill for Sydney Living Museums
This week John Macarthur is heading home to Sydney after eight years away. That’s means it’s time to go shopping! Continue reading
Mrs Gaffney's date and nut cake from Eat your history, stories and recipes from Australian kitchens. (SLM and NewSouth Publishing, 2015). Photo © James Horan for Sydney Living Museums
Regular readers may remember we’ve been on a quest to identify some of the contributors the Meroogal manuscript recipe collection. The recipes appear to date from the 1890s. We do feel we might be on the right track Continue reading