By Catherine Field-Dodgson and Michele Leggott Last month Michele reflected on Emily Harris’s missing 1906 sub-antarctic panel and wondered what it might look like: We can make some guesses about the size and content of Emily’s second panel of Antarctic flowers, to date unlocated. Given her predilection for symmetry we can guess the second panel Read More…
Tag: Puke Ariki
Antarctic Flowers 1906 at Puke Ariki
By Michele Leggott and Catherine Field-Dodgson, with research support from Runa Bhakta and Libby Baker Four tall spikes of ligusticum reach from the bottom of a rectangular panel towards the top of Emily Harris’s painting. The two largest have flower heads that resemble a carrot in flower, but with pink rather than white umbels and Read More…
Sarah Harris’s Ghostly Letters
By Michele Leggott The Turnbull Typings It is like looking at ghosts. The Alexander Turnbull Library holds typed copies of four letters written by Sarah Harris in New Plymouth to her father and sisters in England 1841 and 1843. Thanks to an accompanying note dated 1922, we know more or less how the copies came Read More…
A new Emily Harris painting at Puke Ariki
Kathryn Mercer is remembering how she and colleague Mike Gooch spotted an Emily Harris watercolour among the items in the New Plymouth hospice auction earlier this year. It was an exciting moment, and within hours pictorial collections curator Chanelle Carrick was on her way to check out the painting and to ascertain whether or not Read More…
The Emily line in NSW: Moore, Tregeagle, Needham
The first person to transcribe Emily Harris’s 1860-61 letters at the Taranaki Museum in January 1999 was Sue Needham. For a long time we assumed that Sue was a staff member or a summer intern because part of her typed transcript is on museum letterhead. Later we learned from correspondence held by Roseanne Cranstone that 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…