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…

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…

Otto Weyergang Writes Home

Among the Cranstone Papers are eight letters Emily Harris’s nephew Otto Weyergang wrote to his sister Gretchen Briant and mother Mary Weyergang while serving with the New Zealand Army 1917-18. At the time of the letters Mary was about to move to Nelson to live with her sister Emily. Neither Otto nor Gretchen was sure the move Read More…

Open Call for Emily’s New Zealand Flowers, New Zealand Berries, and New Zealand Ferns

How far did Emily Harris’s books of botanical lithographs travel? How many copies did she sign and hand-colour? These and other questions have come to the fore as we search overseas catalogues and collate the results, finding a surprising number of hand-coloured sets outside New Zealand. New Zealand Flowers, New Zealand Berries, and New Zealand Read More…