Tuesday, February 10, 2015

ABORIGINAL FACES LINK WITH ADELAIDE MUSEUM COLLECTION ?

These  two  Aboriginal   faces ,  bought years  ago  at  a  garage sale  in  North  Queensland , are  thought  to  have  come from a  large  collection offered  for sale  by  the South  Australian  Museum in  the 1930s, said to be a "never ending  source of interest  to all tourists."  An advertisement in  the September  1938  issue of the Australian Tourist News, a quarterly produced in Adelaide  by  Bond's Tours , carried an illustrated  advertisement  for  the Museum  offering 36  face  casts  and six  busts of  Australian Aborigines made  from moulds "secured by  Museum   officers  during expeditions  to  Central Australia  and  various  parts of  South Australia ." Busts : Painted , four pound , unpainted,  two pound 10 shillings. Faces : Painted , two pound ,unpainted, one pound five shillings . 
 
NOTE: The tourist magazine mentioned  here, in the Little Darwin Ephemera Collection , was edited  by  well known Australian composer  Jack  Fewster , the  front cover photograph, a view of the Adelaide cathedral , provided  by adventurer  Captain Frank Hurley (1885-1962),who started his career as a photographer  with a Sydney postcard  maker , built up a reputation as  the "mad photographer " covering WW1, made six trips to Antarctica , including the Shackleton expedition,  and  voyaged  into  the  Torres Strait  and  New  Guinea.