KOOKABURRA BROOCH

In the collection of the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney Australia. Object number P3219

This brooch has been adapted from a watercolour design by the French-Australian artist, Lucien Henry, (1850-1896). The bird was a pedestal for an electric light bracket to be attached to a wall. 

Lucien Henry championed the use of plants and animals of his adopted country as the first lecturer in Art at Sydney Technical College in 1883. The Powerhouse Museum holds all the watercolours Henry painted for his ambitious book project, Australian Decorative Arts, which he begun in 1889.

SWAN AND NUGGET BROOCH

In the collection of the Powerhouse Museum, Sydney Australia. Object number A6557-1

This design is adapted from a brooch originally bought in 1898 from the jeweller and retailer Joseph Masel in Fremantle, Western Australia. It was paid for in local gold. Bar brooches decorated with swans (the black swan is the heraldic emblem of Western Australia) were very popular pieces made iin the colony in the 1890s. 

The Western Australian goldfields were among the world's richest. The finds in Coolgardie in 1892 and Kalgoorlie in 1893 attracted thousands of gold diggers as well as many jewellers to the colony.