An essential reference for curators, private collectors, dealers, auctioneers, investors, social and cultural historians, includes entries for 660 Australian furniture and picture frame makers, retailers and
designers - the result of seven year's gallery, museum, library, newspaper and field research. Superbly illustrated with over 1000 photographs, 600 in colour.

Australian Furniture: Pictorial History and Dictionary 1788-1938 is the most comprehensive survey of quality furniture, its marks and makers, yet undertaken in this country. A natural progression from the authors' previous works, Early Colonial Furniture in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land (1972) and Nineteenth Century Australian Furniture (1985), this volume is designed to further assist in the accurate identification and dating of furniture made in this country prior to the outbreak of World War II.

Divided into two sections, the first, a dictionary, includes over 660 entries. Biographies of makers, retailers and designers, by whom an item of furniture with a mark or label is known to survive, are compiled from seven years of painstaking documentary and field research. Professional furniture makers and skilled amateurs are entered alike, as are the hitherto ignored endeavours of the picture frame maker. Among
those listed are immigrant German cabinet-makers; including those arriving in South Australia from the late 1830s who continued to produce furniture in the Biedermeier style for their self-contained
communities; and Chinese cabinet-makers, flooding into Australia in search of gold in the 1850s and 60s, who quickly adapted their traditions and skills to furniture making for a market with largely British taste.

The second section is a pictorial history of Australian furniture containing over 600 full colour plates illustrating the best and most representative examples of each furniture type. These superb photographs provide impressive evidence of the amount of quality work produced in Australia prior to the mid twentieth century domination of the market by factory-made furniture and imports. Each plate is accompanied by a caption in which the process of the object's attribution has been detailed - drawing on the trained eye of the connoisseur to identify timbers and stylistic features and the documentary evidence of meticulous
scholarly research; including contemporary references from newspapers, furniture pattern books and catalogues as well as relevant secondary source material - to give a practical framework for the accurate dating and critical assessment of Australian-made furniture.

The dictionary entries in Australian Furniture: Pictorial History and Dictionary 1788-1938 contain over 420 black & white photographs of marks, trade cards and labels as well as collection and bibliographical references. Easy access to such previously unavailable information about antipodean cabinet and picture frame makers will undoubtedly influence the market for Australian furniture and may suggest new directions for collecting in both the public and private spheres.

Published as a companion to Nineteenth Century Australian Furniture, in a small edition of 2,000
volumes - each signed and numbered by the authors - Australian Furniture: Pictorial History and
Dictionary 1788-1938 is planned as a fully self-contained work of reference.

Wholly produced in Australia with 516 pages, printed on archival paper and bound to withstand years of reading, it is presented in a substantial cloth bound slip case (318mm X 252mm). Australian Furniture: Pictorial History and Dictionary 1788-1938 is an investment which will rapidly appreciate in value, as evidenced by the resale demand and value of Nineteenth Century Australian Furniture - which has become a collector's item in its own right.