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Caroline Simpson Library

Recipe booklet: Fowler's Method: of bottling fruits and vegetables, Fowlers Vacola, Victoria, Melbourne, Australia, 1952
Talk

An Appetite for History

Cookbooks and manuscript recipes from the 1830s to the 1970s

Wednesday 12 March 6pm–7.30pm
Murphy sample book 2: No. 10. 1925
Talk

A Lesson in Bold Design

Exploring the John and Phyllis Murphy Collection of historic wallpapers

Wednesday 5 February 6pm–7.30pm
Alexander Mackintosh Archive : architectural plans and specifications, 1901-ca.1921: Waterhouse & Lake : architectural plans and specifications, 1909-1924 / B.J. Waterhouse & J.W. Lake [architectural drawing]

The Alexander Mackintosh Archive: revealing records of a master builder

Forgotten for decades, the archive of building contractor Alexander Mackintosh was rediscovered in a roof space in the 1990s. It includes more than 270 architectural drawings and reveals information about the work of many of Sydney’s leading architects of the early 20th century

Acquisition of the John and Phyllis Murphy wallpaper collection
Online talk

Murphy Wallpaper Collection

This webinar will illustrate the (perhaps surprising) riot of colour and pattern with which Australians decorated their homes in the 19th and early 20th centuries and will also consider what these wallpapers can tell us about the aspirations of Australian homeowners in the past

Friday 7 February 10.30am–11.30am
Scottish Rifles outside Hyde Park Barracks / photographer Charles Bayliss
Latest News

New insights from an old photograph

A recent acquisition for the Caroline Simpson Library captures a rare view of the long-demolished southern range of the Hyde Park Barracks

[Sydney from the north shore], Joseph Lycett, 1827.

Hearing the music of early New South Wales

A new website documents an exciting partnership between Museums of History NSW and the University of Sydney in an exploration of Indigenous song and European settler vocal and instrumental music in early colonial NSW

Designs for elegant cottages and small villas, calculated for the comfort and convenience of persons of moderate and of ample fortune carefully studied and thrown into perspective : to which is annexed, a general estimate of the probable expense attending the execution of each design / by E. Gyfford

The architectural pattern books of Elizabeth Macquarie

The architectural achievements of Governor Macquarie’s era are usually attributed to Macquarie’s architect Francis Greenway. Yet evidence collected during an inquiry into the state of the colony of NSW in the early 1820s includes references to the involvement of the governor’s wife, Elizabeth Macquarie, in matters architectural

Design for a cabinet

The Paul Kafka (Vienna) Archive

The collection consists of over 700 furniture design drawings by various Central European designers dating from between about 1920 and 1939. It originates from Vienna, Austria, where Paul Kafka worked for his father’s furniture business before emigrating to Australia

Designs for villas and other rural buildings : engraved on thirty-one plates, with plans and explanations together with a memoir of the author and an introductory essay, containing remarks on the defects of modern architecture, and an investigation of the style best adapted for the dwellings of modern times. / by Edmund Aikin, architect

Architectural pattern books

Packed with architectural plans, house elevations and patterns, these publications have shaped much of Australia’s architectural history. We hold one of the country’s largest public collections of this format