By Michele Leggott, with research support from Catherine Field-Dodgson Families keep the strangest things. For years now we have been looking at what we take to be the oldest document in Sarah Harris’s family history, a tattered and yellowing piece of paper pasted into the notebook that is full of intriguing items from the English Read More…
Tag: edwin harris
And this is my picture: a 1906 painting comes to Wellington
By Russell Briant And this is my picture. Or how we got our own Emily Harris, ‘Kiekie, Tī Ngahere, Nīkau, Mikoikoi and Neinei’ (1906) My name is Russell Briant and Emily Cumming Harris is my 3x great aunt. Those of you who have read this wonderful blog may know that the Briant connection with the Read More…
Edwin’s Books: The Briant Connection
By Michele Leggott It is 1961. Brothers Philip Winning and Hugh Godfrey Briant look over family papers and books passed down from their late mother Gretchen Briant née Weyergang and decide to gift a letter and a dictionary to the Taranaki Museum. The brothers farm at Bonny Glen, Marton and have been talking to their Read More…
New on the website! Lighted Windows
Lighted Windows: The Death and Resurrection of Corbyn Harris We present a sequence of archival fragments surrounding the death of Hugh Corbyn Harris 28 July 1860 and some of the memorialising events that followed. Chief among these is the series of works by Corbyn’s father Edwin depicting the town of New Plymouth under siege in Read More…
A Trilogy of Windmills
The Auction It starts with a buzz around an auction. A painting of a windmill has appeared at Auckland’s International Art Centre signed by Edwin Harris. Oil on canvas, Landscape with Windmill measures 16.5 x 24 cm and depicts a peaceful scene, cloudy blue sky up above, a softly looping road with a cart, sparse Read More…
Mr Manby, Professor of Music
By Michele Leggott The inscription on the headstone in Edwin Harris’s pencil sketch reads: ‘Sacred to the memory of Charles William Manby | Formerly of 85 Fleet Street London | Born 8th March 1809 | Died 11th April 1866 | Aged 57 Years | Let everything that has breath praise the Lord | Psalm CL:6.’ Read More…
Playing Snap with Edwin Harris
By Brianna Vincent I thoroughly enjoyed my part of working on Edwin Harris’s sketchbooks, one of the interesting parts of the experience being how it became an exercise in sustained déjà vu. The déjà vu would leave me carefully leafing through the pages and wondering if I had seen this building, this tree, this beach, 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…
Sue Needham Writes
Sue Needham contacted us earlier this week, excited to find that our project and her Emily Harris research are a perfect fit. Michele and Betty will be in Sydney at the Mitchell Library in a few weeks’ time. With luck, Sue will fly from Brisbane to meet us and examine Emily’s handcoloured New Zealand Flowers, Read More…
On the ground at Nile St
We’ve been thinking about 34 Nile St, Nelson for a long time now, consulting street plans, Post Office Directories and electoral rolls in our efforts to trace the movement of Harris family members on the site 1862-1925. We know that the family arrived in Nelson in three instalments. Sarah Harris sailed 11 April 1860 from Read More…