By Michele Leggott The Wanganui Chronicle reviewer offers a detailed critique of the still life and flower paintings of Mrs Hardcastle, wife of the town’s recently appointed resident magistrate: (72) is a full sized brace of French partridges, hung against the deal lined wall of a larder. If the frame of the picture had been Read More…
Author: Makyla Curtis
The Misses’ Harris school in Nile St
By Michele Leggott There was a longstanding tradition of teaching among the Harris women. It began with Sarah Harris teaching Sunday school soon after the family’s arrival in Taranaki in March 1841. Later Sarah established two elementary schools near the Harris farm in Frankley Rd in order to educate her own children and those of Read More…
After the War: Edwin’s sketchbooks go live
By Michele Leggott We begin posts for 2020 with online publication of sketches by Edwin Harris from the period of the family’s relocation to Nelson after the loss of their son Corbyn in the Taranaki War of 1860. Our captions are provisional and we welcome improvements from those who know the Nelson region better than Read More…
2019 highlights
Setting up a research website in February this year to host source materials and edited publications was a breakthrough moment for the Emily Harris project. The website is a way to organise some of the research trails we are following in order to draw attention to Emily’s art and writing. It’s great to be Read More…
A new Emily Harris painting at Puke Ariki
Kathryn Mercer is remembering how she and colleague Mike Gooch spotted an Emily Harris watercolour among the items in the New Plymouth hospice auction earlier this year. It was an exciting moment, and within hours pictorial collections curator Chanelle Carrick was on her way to check out the painting and to ascertain whether or not Read More…
Dot Moore writes from New Zealand, 1910
Sometimes the voice comes from a long way off but it can still make powerful connections. In one of Sue Needham’s folders is a retyping of her cousin Graeme Griffin’s typed transcript of a letter written by Dorothy Moore (1896-1979) to her sister Constance around 1910. Dot, aged about 13, is writing home to Lismore, Read More…
Connecting with Edwin’s optical amusement
Annabel Galpin and her daughter Louise were in New Plymouth earlier this year for the WOMAD festival. They also made time to go and see at first hand Edwin Harris’s optical amusement, the view of new Plymouth 3 august 1860 that has collaged figures and carefully cut openings (windows, doors, tents, moon) through which actual Read More…
Joining the Dots: England
Sometimes what was (the past) is a heartbeat away from what is (the present, ourselves standing in a particular location). Worlds coalesce for a moment and then move apart. Here are some highlights from our searches in England that seem to join the dots between one world and another. We are in Liskeard, Cornwall, and Read More…
What Happened at Ilchester Mansion
The clue was staring at us all along. Edwin’s youngest sister Ellen Susan Harris, writing to New Zealand in 1842, gives an insouciant account of leaving her position as a governess and then continues with family news: But I will say no more of myself as I think you will be better pleased to hear Read More…
Emily’s Plymouth, 1840
Can we reconstruct Emily Harris’s Plymouth from traces in family letters and what the city archivists can show us now? Nigel Overton takes us on a tour of central Plymouth based on material compiled by Graham Naylor from the addresses we forwarded a couple of weeks ago. It’s a magic experience that suddenly makes vivid Read More…