It is late November 2018. We are in the Rare Room of the Morris Miller Library at the University of Tasmania, looking at Emily Harris’s New Zealand Flowers, New Zealand Berries and New Zealand Ferns. The University’s copies of Emily’s three books, published in Nelson by HD Jackson in 1890, are part of Special and Read More…
News
Caroline Screech
So troublesome are the rats that we shake them off our beds and you will laugh when I tell you that Caroline, who lives with me, the same who lived with Mrs Court, has a poultice up to her leg and the rats ate through the bed clothes and cloths to the bread which they Read More…
White Mānuka and Pōhutukawa
The bouquet of white mānuka and pōhutukawa blends into a landscape, ocean in the distance, a blue sky with wisps of cloud and gulls flying. A context is being suggested but not a straight-forward one. We are looking at a bouquet and yet these fronds and stems of flowers stand in for the trees in Read More…
Cross-Eyed Cross Writing
“I did not hesitate to cross the stile when I found myself in a large fern clearing, the spot I stood on was high ground…” This is the last clear line of an entry from Sarah Harris’s notebook, as she describes getting lost in the forest. The next page is filled with cross-writing, the writing Read More…
Emily and the Suter Gift Book
Curator Sarah McClintock of the Suter Art Gallery Te Aratoi o Whakatū has discovered a watercolour drawing that could be the latest-known work by Emily Harris. The drawing of pink-flowering mānuka with an artist’s palette and fern vines is part of the Nelson Suter Art Society Gift Book for Mrs JA Topliss. The book contains Read More…
Harris Family of Plymouth and New Plymouth
Nelson researcher Anne McFadgen got talking online to Harris descendant Owen Jones about his family tree. Owen forwarded images of a set of bound letters by Edwin and Sarah Harris, explaining that the letters were copies of lost originals written between 1844 and 1854. He also sent a PDF of transcriptions of the letters made Read More…
Meeting the Descendants
Two years ago today great great grand-daughters of Edwin and Sarah Harris came to Special Collections at the University of Auckland to meet researchers working on Emilys story. They brought with them a shopping bag full of family papers, a photo album and two war medals. Annabel Galpin, Roseanne Cranstone and their cousin Heather Jones Read More…