‘A night or two ago I dreamed that I said it is a long time since I called at my Father’s and your parents and that I was determined I would go the next day. I awoke to disappointment wishing I might never dream again.’ (Sarah Harris #15) ‘Will you in the next send me Read More…
News
Houhere (lacebark) in Flower at Milford Sound
The Union Steamship company offered special excursion tickets to Melbourne at reduced prices during the International Exhibition of 1880-81. We don’t know which boat Emily Harris took to Melbourne but it is safe to say that she would have been travelling saloon class and paying the 16 pounds that gave her the option of a Read More…
Mrs Levien Signs a Melbourne Visitors’ Book
It is Friday 30 November 2018, the opening day of the annual Big Design Market at the Royal Exhibition Building in Melbourne. The ground floor of the Great Hall is packed with vendors, buyers, stalls and displays. A roar of music and a susurrus of voices floats up to the mezzanine where volunteer guide Phil Read More…
Waiting for the Circus: Emily Harris in Hobart
It is late November 2018. We are in downtown Hobart looking for 140 Elizabeth St, where artist and photographer Alfred Bock had his studio in the 1860s. Just three pieces of physical evidence link Emily Harris with Hobart. One of them is a studio portrait taken by Bock sometime between Emily’s arrival in 1861 and Read More…
Emily’s New Zealand Ferns in Hobart
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…
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…