Object Stories
The objects at Martindale Hall reveal the lifestyles of their owners and the values of the period in which they were collected. Our researchers bring new perspectives to the meanings behind these collections for a contemporary audience.
Our project uses high-performance 3D modelling to create ‘digital twins’ of many of these objects.
Since the 1990s digitisation has been viewed as a way to breathe new life into local and regional collections and to assist community history and heritage organisations with the economic, demographic and social challenges posed by life in regional Australia.
This project and website showcase the ‘slow digitisation’ of Martindale Hall and its collections with the aim of bringing them to a wider audience—enabling better connections between objects, people and issues, and past and present.
Explore the examples below that use point-cloud data and SketchFab software to recreate objects and landscapes in virtual 3D. 1
‘Cheval’—A Parisian Horse Statuette
Among the eclectic collection of antiques at Martindale Hall is a small metal ‘cheval’ (horse) sculpture. This is a seemingly unassuming object among the many antique curiosities that have remained from, or been added to, the Hall since its manor-house days.
commemorative teacup and saucer
In December 1936, King Edward VIII abdicated the throne of England after 325 days as monarch. An English bone china teacup-and-saucer pair in the Martindale Hall Smoking Room commemorates this sequence of extraordinary events, capturing the transition from one king to another.
The Dugong Skull
The dugong skull hangs on the wall of the Smoking Room as a trophy. The skull belonged to a dugong shot by J. T. (Jack) Mortlock’s chauffeur, Jeff Thrum, during their hunting trip to Queensland in August 1937.
Four Egyptian-cotton textile pieces adorn the Smoking Room of Martindale Hall. They are examples of the appliqué textiles called ‘Khayamiya’ crafted by the Tentmakers of Cairo and popular among tourists to Egypt who bring them home as souvenirs.
In 1922, the racehorse ‘Vesuvius’, owned by J. T. Mortlock and C. Howie, won the Oaklands Plate at the Port Adelaide Racing Club. The trophy, a large sterling-silver buckle made by the Sheffield silversmiths Walker and Hall, is engraved with the owners’ and winner’s names. A tartan sash lined with a golden fringe completes the trophy.
Japanese arts became fashionable collectables just after Japanese trade with the West opened in the mid-1800s. The collection at Martindale Hall highlights a trend in the collection and display of Japanese objects in grand homes at the turn of the twentieth century.
Sri Lankan Masks
The colourful and fearsome Sri Lankan masks on the western wall of the Smoking Room are likely to be tourist pieces, bought by the Mortlocks when in Sri Lanka in 1920–1921 or 1930. Over the mantelpiece, the larger assemblage dominated by the Maha Kola, ‘the boss of 18 demons of illness’, relates to a healing ceremony, conducted by a shaman.
Taj Mahal lamp
The finely crafted alabaster model of the Taj Mahal, made into a lamp, sits in the entrance hall at Martindale Hall. It was collected on Jack Mortlock’s tour to India in 1930. Very few are held in Western museums, and this is one of the finest.
THE SNIDER-ENFIELD CARBINE
The Snider-Enfield carbine dating from the 1860s was widely used by British forces in the later nineteenth century. However, until 1950, there were more guns of display, which Jack Mortlock had used to shoot all sorts of animals and birds on the Eyre Peninsula, at Martindale, in Queensland and New Zealand.
Javanese lampshade
The Javanese lampshade has links to the centuries old Hindu epic, the Ramayana. The design echoes the wayang kulit, leather shadow puppets made in artisan workshops in Yogyakarta. This hybrid object refers to Dutch colonialism and efforts to create new markets among the Dutch colonials in the Indies as the buying power of Javanese elites declined.
Re-creating Annie Bowman’s 1884 Wedding Dress
The aim of reconstructing Annie Bowman’s wedding dress was to investigate the role of reconstruction in the conservation of history and heritage, and present Martindale Hall museum-goers with a material object of Bowman history that resembled the original — as it was photographed — as closely as possible.
Footnotes
- A point cloud is a set of data points in 3D space. The points together represent a 3D shape or object. ‘Point Cloud Processing’, MathWorks, https://www.mathworks.com/help/vision/point-cloud-processing.html ↩︎