By Michele Leggott Emily Harris loved camping. She wrote in her diary: ‘Ever since our very successful camping out party last year, I had determined to go again if possible. So whenever the Wrights mentioned it I always said I wished we could go again and so by degrees another party was arranged for Read More…
Tag: emily cumming harris
Chess, Art, Theosophy: The Studio at 34 Nile St
By Brianna Vincent When I hear the words ‘art studio’, I think of a place filled with peaceful solitude and quiet. But Emily’s studio in the Harris home at 34 Nile Street East was a bustling social space that served a variety of purposes, some of which we can find evidence for advertised in the Read More…
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…
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…
Adelaide report
Lee Hayes is looking thoughtfully at the three single bound copies of Emily Harris’s New Zealand Flowers, Berries and Ferns in the Barr Smith Library at the University of Adelaide. We can see that the dark blue leather of the original binding has been cut out and stuck on to cloth-bound boards that don’t quite Read More…
Sydney Report
‘It’s beautiful!’ Sue Needham is looking at the first plate of her great-great-aunt Emily Harris’s hand-coloured New Zealand Flowers, Berries and Ferns at the Mitchell Library in Sydney. She hasn’t seen the books before. The rich yellows of Ranunculus pinguis, the native buttercup, leap from the page. ‘And look how carefully she’s modelled those leaves,’ Read More…
Kākābeak: Spring update
Michele and I are heading to Australia soon to check out hand-coloured sets of Emily Harris’s New Zealand Flowers, Berries and Ferns. In Sydney we’ll visit the Mitchell Library / State Library of New South Wales. Then we’ll continue on to Adelaide, where the University also has a complete, hand-coloured set of Flowers, Berries and Read More…
Kōwhai
I passed a kōwhai tree in flower this morning and thought of Emily. The early springtime flowers are opening up one after another and the tūī birds are getting louder and louder. Soon they’ll crowd the kōwhai, turning their beaks bright yellow with pollen. I love to see a puffed up tūī singing in black Read More…