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• Auction House:
  Bonhams Australia
• Sale Name:
  Important Australian Art
• Sale Date:
  22 Apr 2021 ~ 6.30pm (AEST)
• Lot #:
  16
• Lot Description:
  Maker Unknown
  (South East Australia)
  A parrying shield, late 19th century
  wood, natural earth pigments
  length: 71.0cm (27 15/16in).
• Provenance:
  The Ham Collection, New South Wales
• Notes:
  The Ham Collection of Indigenous Artefacts. Hedley William de Robert Ham (1871-1959) was a wool classer and Merino sheep breeder who travelled extensively throughout Victoria and New South Wales during the early 1880s classing wool and managing shearing sheds. He finally settled to breed and farm Merino sheep at 'Lara Plains', Jerilderie, New South Wales in 1923. The property is still owned and run by the Ham family to this day. The Ham family have retained almost 200 letters written by Hedley during his travels between 1893 and 1923 to his wife, Fanny Hunt, and are a fascinating historical record of the time. They tell of the advent of railway travel, agricultural development such as the development of Sunshine Harvesters, unemployment, drought, depression, rabbit plagues and general farming life. They also reflect on the shearers strikes, and detailed insights into life on farms and sheep properties and how shearing, scouring, classing and other processes were conducted. Hedley writes of the incredibly difficult conditions of managing sheds where fifty thousand sheep were shorn in very hot weather with hand-held shears, about the general poor conditions for shearers, life on a property where the doctor brought typhoid, hundreds of shearers came down with measles, and having to defend the station sheep from drunk and violent strikers. On 29th August 1895, during a wool-classing excursion to Big Willandra - a substantial sheep and grazing property north of Hillston in New South Wales - Hedley wrote excitedly to Fanny of the purchase of a 'set of spears and things...18 pieces in all' from Sheilds, the Hillston Senior Constable, who had, in turn, purchased them from the local Aboriginal men. The weapons graced the walls of the family home in Coreen St, Jerilderie and then more recently were transferred to Lara Plains, the family farm that Hedley bought in 1923. Bonhams would like to thank Rosalie Ham for providing this account.
• Estimate:
  A$2,000 - 3,000
• Realised Price:
  *****
  

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• Category:
  Art

This Sale has been held and this item is no longer available. Details are provided for information purposes only.