Memorializing Colonial Childhoods: From the Frontier to the Museum

Abstract

In the early 1940s, Felicity Clemons, the wife of a Tasmanian doctor, embarked on the task of ‘improving’ a small dolls’ house her daughter had received as a gift. This endeavour spanned four decades, and revealed Clemons’ interest in colonial history. The daughter of Sir Geoffrey Syme, managing director of the Age newspaper, Clemons had grown up in Melbourne and had exhibited at the Arts and Crafts Society of Victoria.1 She directed her artistic skills to her Georgian dolls’ house, Pendle Hall, which gradually acquired 21 rooms over four storeys. Its elaborate interiors were arranged with finely wrought period furniture, and hundreds of tiny, handmade objects: foodstuffs, ornaments, books a..