Browse Items (337 total)

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Mannequin 1
Ella and Percy Grainger, Shirt, c.1930s. Machine sewn shirt with manufactured towelling hand sewn to sleeves. 04.5228
Ella and Percy Grainger, Tunic, c. 1930s. Towel, Machine and hand-sewn using Australian Dri-Glo…

At the turn of the twentieth century, when Australia’s first permanent orchestras were beginning to emerge, the University of Melbourne employed Walter Barker as Victoria’s first university level harp teacher. Barker established himself in Melbourne…

bronze bust

The sansa or ‘thumb piano’ is common across Africa. It is played by plucking the metal tongues over the wooden resonator to produce a pitched buzzing sound. This sansa was acquired on his travels by Australian composer and pianist Percy Grainger, who…

This instrument was hand-crafted by Faculty of Music lecturer and musicologist Meredith Maxwell Moon. Fascinated by early music, Moon began building reproduction instruments while working at the Bodleian Library in Oxford during the 1960s. Through…

The Dalmation was the first opera written by a woman to be performed in Australia. Its libretto was adapted from F. Marion Crawford’s novel, Marietta: A Maid of Venice. Excerpts were performed in late 1910, and the first full performance was given in…

In 1896 Mona McBurney graduated from the Bachelor of Music at the University of Melbourne, becoming the first woman in Australia to receive this degree. Born on the Isle of Man, McBurney came from a musical and scholarly family. Moving to Victoria in…

This chart for teaching singing was made by Samuel McBurney (b. Glasgow, UK 1847, d. Melbourne 1909), who taught sight singing and ear training at the Conservatorium of Music at the University of Melbourne in the late nineteenth century. Probably the…

DESCRIPTION: Oblong, hinged lid, on four ball-shaped legs. Inscribed brass plaque on inside lid (see Inscriptions). Currently contains 7 silver-coloured large beads. Inside it is another box, cardboard, also with an inscribed lid.
INSCRIPTIONS: On…

Chinese ceramic ware is an art form that has been developing for thousands of years and prospered in various forms. Prior to the seventh century, monochrome wares dominated the ceramic production and favoured by the aristocracy class. It is not until…