Author: Baker, Richard T.
Publisher: Government Printer, Sydney.
Format: Hardcover large octavo in blindstamped brick cloth boards and gilt text, waratah decorated endpapers, ix + 84pp + 29 coloured plates and many black & white illustrations, 25.3 x 18.8cm.
Title text includes “Technical education series no. 22. Department of Public Instruction. Technological museum, Sydney, NSW. Richard T. Baker, FLS, etc, curator and economic botanist, lecturer on timbers, Sydney University.”
Richard T. Baker (1854–1951), British/Australian botanist and museum curator “details the use of the Waratah motif in Australian architecture and decorative arts. Baker argues that the Waratah motif had figured in almost all of the local branches of the liberal arts and sciences since the Colony’s foundation (i.e. 1788) to his times. In the spirit of Lucien Henry, he offered this study as ‘a contribution towards the foundation of a National School of Australian Applied Art & Design’ so that design students would study the local flora as a source of inspiration. He discusses the various types of NSW, Victorian and Tasmanian waratahs and shows their application in the local architecture, bookbindings, ceramics, enamel tiles, electrical fittings, glassware, horology, ironwork, lace, modelling, silverware, wallpapers, dados, friezes, windows and woodcarvings.” Ref: SLNSW. Held in SLNSW; NLA.
Light scuffing and minor rubbing to boards, minor foxing to endpapers. Very good.
