Reading the House Library
Hear from Dr Matthew Stephens, Research Librarian at the Caroline Simpson Library & Research Collection, as he shares stories and treasures from some of NSW’s most intriguing book collections.
Discover fascinating insights, including how many books made up the average 19th–century house library, the most popular titles and authors of the time and how a book that once belonged to the world’s first gothic novelist came to reside in our collection. Matthew will focus on the house libraries of Elizabeth Bay House and Throsby Park, Moss Vale.
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Books of lost emotion: exploring our historic house libraries
The thousands of books in MHNSW’s historic houses provided entertainment, education, moral improvement and spiritual sustenance – and now offer intriguing and moving insights into the people who owned them
Talks & webinars
Murphy Wallpaper Collection
The recent donation to the Caroline Simpson Library of thousands of wallpapers in the John and Phyllis Murphy Collection means that Museums of History NSW now has the largest holding of historical wallpapers in Australia
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Phyllis Shillito and her colour curriculum 1945–1979
This event focused on the colour curriculum of pioneering Sydney-based colour designer and educator Phyllis Shillito (1895–1980) of the 1940s to the 1970s
The Extraordinary Story of Rose de Freycinet
Hear the story of Rose de Freycinet, the first woman to write an account of a global circumnavigation, with Suzanne Falkiner
Historic colour in the home
The many sources in the Caroline Simpson Library that can bring colour to the homes of past, with Matthew Stephens