Michele Leggott and Catherine Field-Dodgson

Recent gigs at the Alexander Turnbull Library and Te Papa continue bringing Groundwork: The Art and Writing of Emily Cumming Harris to new and enthusiastic audiences.

We were invited to address the Friday morning online staff meeting of the Alexander Turnbull Library to talk about our research in their collections. Around 60 librarians were on the call from Wellington, Christchurch and Auckland. Catherine came into the main library in Wellington and Michele was part of the online attendance.

Our presentation was titled ‘101 Years of Emily Harris at the Alexander Turnbull Library.’ We focused on the library’s collection of Emily’s paintings, the largest anywhere in the world, mostly acquired in 1924 by Turnbull’s first librarian, Johannes Andersen.

We had some questions for the librarians and they had some for us. Gaps in our knowledge of the collection might one day be filled if the librarians can dig deeper than we have been able to.

After the online call, Catherine met a dozen or so librarians and kaimahi in the Heaphy Room where some of Emily’s most spectacular work was laid out for inspection. We enjoyed looking closely at paintings from Emily’s ‘New Zealand Mountain Flora’ and ‘New Zealand Flowers 1900’. It was also a great opportunity to examine Emily’s hand-coloured lithograph books from the library’s collection, commissioned by Alexander Horsburgh Turnbull himself in 1899.  These sat alongside Catherine and Michele’s own hand-coloured editions and everyone was fascinated by the colour comparisons.

More names and email addresses were exchanged and several interesting leads popped up in conversation.

The following week, Groundwork was the occasion of a regular monthly meeting of the Friends of Te Papa hosted by the museum and Te Papa Press. Around 20 Friends gathered in the Reading Room to hear Te Papa host and actor Ralph Johnson read an excerpt from chapter 9 of our book.

Catherine had also laid out our entire collection of Emily’s sets of New Zealand Flowers, Berries and Ferns for people to look at, the first time all of our coloured and uncoloured editions have been on display.

Questions came thick and fast as the Friends took on board the colour variations across Emily’s books and the intense labour of the artist in colouring 39 lithograph plates per set. Catherine was also asked about Emily’s other artistic practices, and afterwards she signed copies of Groundwork for those present.