Discover SLM
Find a weekly summary of what’s new across our channels, look up activities to do at home with the family, including in the kitchen and the garden, explore our properties and our collections, and settle in for some good long reads.
This week’s focus:
From painters to musicians, join us as we celebrate artists and makers! Find out more about lost trades, stories from our historic houses and past exhibitions and how our properties continue to spark creativity today.
Follow us on social media for more. #DiscoverSLM
Story
Bessie Rouse's scrap album
A nineteenth-century scrap album, carefully stored in a bookcase at Rouse Hill House, holds hidden treasure – if you know what you’re looking at.
Collection
Homemade Wallpaper: Morrison's of Sydney
Morrison's built a successful wallpaper manfacturing business in early 20th century Sydney.
Activity
Create your own love token
Follow our instructions to make your own convict love token. Watch this on demand lesson to learn more about convict love tokens from our education team.
Recipe
Tot Thorburn’s wedding cake
Known as ‘Tottie’, Kennina Thorburn, who lived at Meroogal from 1893 to 1945, was renowned for the wedding cakes she made for close friends and family members
Watch
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The Art of Botanical Illustration: a Norfolk Island Pine by Angela Lober
Duration: 13:53
The Art of Botanical Illustration: a Norfolk Island Pine by Angela Lober
Join botanical artist Angela Lober as she brings the Norfolk Island pine to life on paper.
Duration: 13:53
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How did convicts make bricks?
Duration: 3:31
How did convicts make bricks?
Convict Joseph Smyth (Smith) is a master brick maker working for the government and he has a tough job ahead of him. Governor Macquarie has an ambitious building project for Sydney and thousands of bricks are needed. Joseph has to teach two newly arrived convicts how to make clay bricks as part of a brick gang.
Duration: 3:31
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Old-fashioned Lemonade
Duration: 3:20
Duration: 3:20
Online puzzles
Get puzzling
Take a moment to relax and recharge with one of our online puzzles featuring our beautiful collections and museums.
Gardens
Queen of the Night
The Queen of the Night is an epiphytic spineless cactus that originates from the rainforests of Central America.
Convicts
A talented convict artist
Two portrait miniatures in our collection illustrate the opportunities available to a skilled convict artist for commissions from the upwardly mobile emancipist and settler population of colonial NSW.
Artist in Resident
Dr Lisa Cooper
Find out more about our first artist in residence, Dr Lisa Cooper, a Sydney-based artist and florist.
Exhibitions & Programs
A Thousand Words exhibition
Meroogal Women’s Art Prize 2020
Artisan Encounters Program
Online shop
More stories
1960s psychedelia at Rouse Hill House
In a short experimental period of music making, the talented young John Terry combined radical musical ideas with abstract imagery and the soundscape of Rouse Hill House.
A 'musical jolt' in early colonial Sydney
Imagine that moment when you first heard your favourite piece of music - something that excited, moved or surprised you. The early musical soundscape of Sydney was teeming with just such moments.
A musical tour back in time
Soprano Nyssa Milligan describes the experience of performing at Elizabeth Bay House in the recent collaboration between Sydney Living Museums and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music.
A paper jukebox: exploring our sheet music collections
Musicologist Dr Graeme Skinner reflects on the historical and cultural significance of the sheet music collections belonging to three of Sydney Living Museums’ historic properties.
An unassuming instrument
By delving into an old harmonium at Rouse Hill House & Farm we hope to learn when it came into the house, who played it, and how we can best look after it.
Bel Canto in the bush: opera and song in Sydney, 1835-1850
Guest of honour Maestro Richard Bonynge AC CBE joins a glittering crowd at Elizabeth Bay House for a concert of popular song from early nineteenth-century Sydney.
Colonial Caledonian: In Search of the Early Scottish Musical Experience
A new short film follows Dr Brianna Robertson-Kirkland, from the Royal Conservatoire of Scotland, on her exploration of early Scottish sheet music held in SLM’s collections.
Contemporary First Peoples Composers
Australia holds one of the oldest living cultures in the world, and First Nations music making is the oldest continuing form of music making. For the Songs of Home exhibition, Sydney Living Museums collaborated with five talented contemporary First Peoples composers.
From the collection: Catherine Hayes illustration
This sheet music cover is the only known copy of this illustration of the soprano Catherine Hayes (1818–1861), one of the world’s first international opera and concert stars.
Here and There: Music at Home in Sydney and London, 1830–1845
On 28 March 2017, concert goers at Elizabeth Bay House experienced a magical evening contrasting two different musical worlds.
House Music at Your House
We invite you to join us in a new musical experiment, bringing the music of the 19th century into the 21st century.
If these walls could talk: Rouse Hill House & Farm
On the evening of 28 April 1899 the first act of a concert held at Rouse Hill House finished with a song performed by the jovial host, Edwin Stephen Rouse (1849–1931).
Jane Austen: at home with music
Jane Austen’s music albums, on display for the first time in Australia, provide a new understanding of the use of music in the author’s work and the importance of music making in the Regency home.
Listening to the past: rediscovering our musical heritage
The stories and collections of our properties contain compelling clues about the music played and enjoyed by earlier generations. Through exciting new initiatives and research we’re reviving these soundscapes for modern audiences.
Music Lessons
Within a tower of yellowed receipts on a spike file at Rouse Hill House & Farm are illuminating details of the musical education of sisters Nina and Kathleen Rouse.
Music Making in Historic Houses
A new short film, 'Sweet Noise: Making Music at Vaucluse House', documents preparations for a musical performance in one of Sydney Living Museums' historic houses.
New musical composition: An artificial social protection
An exciting video performance of a new musical work by British composer Laura Bowler has been released online by Sydney Living Museums.
New Research Partnership
Sydney Living Museums has announced a new partnership with the University of Southampton and the Royal College of Music as part of a three-year research project exploring domestic music and heritage in the Georgian home.
Songs and scandal uncovered: The Dowling Music Project
In an exciting collaboration between Sydney Living Museums and the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, performers from the Historical Performance Unit are bringing to life a previously unknown collection of sheet music which belonged to a young Sydney couple in the 1830s.
Sound Heritage Sydney: Making Music in Historic Places
On the 28th of March 2017, an international forum of invited experts spent a day at Elizabeth Bay House sharing their knowledge about music making in historic houses.
Sydney Children's Choir performs a forgotten song at Rouse Hill Estate
On a warm summer morning, long before any of us had heard of COVID-19, Lyn Williams, artistic director of the Sydney Children’s Choir, and associate artistic director Sam Allchurch sifted through some of the early 19th-century music scores at Sydney Living Museums, and now you can watch the result.
The archaeology of music at Hyde Park Barracks
Hard as it is to imagine men and women in the government institutions at Hyde Park Barracks singing and dancing, archaeological evidence suggests that music may have been heard there from time to time.
The Art of Playing Polka
Sometimes good music takes a while to be appreciated. For the first time, on the 11th of October, a lively dance tune published in Sydney over 160 years ago will be performed at Vaucluse House as part of its centenary celebrations.
The eloquent silence of an old piano
One of Sydney Living Museums’ pianos is almost 200 years old and has not been played since at least the 1960s. We ask Bronwen Griffin, musical instrument conservator, and Professor Neal Peres Da Costa, historical keyboardist, for their thoughts on the piano’s future care.
The Odyssey of an Early Australian Piano
Imagine for a moment if all the old pianos lying around Australia could speak. One can only guess at the stories they would tell and the emotional highs and lows they have shared with their owners through music over the years.
The Oxley piano
An unusually well-preserved 19th-century piano is helping Sydney Living Museums to authentically re-create the sounds of the early colony.
The Rouse Hill ‘Allies in camp’ music roll
Rouse Hill house boasts a fine pianola which came into the house just a few years before the outbreak of World War I. It came with a Themodist attachment, a superior model which allowed the player of the pianola to control musical phrasing and thematic changes. This capacity would have been particularly desirable for one of the music rolls in the collection at Rouse Hill House & Farm
The Rouses of Rouse Hill: a family of music consumers
The sheet music shared online for the House Music at Your House program comes from an extraordinary collection at Rouse Hill Estate.
The Stewart Symonds sheet music collection
A recently acquired collection of printed sheet music provides valuable insights into Sydney’s music trade and concert scene in the 19th century and offers opportunities for musical interpretation of Sydney Living Museums’ places.
The surprising legacy of Miss Pye of Parramatta
Visitors to Richmond Villa, head office of the Society of Australian Genealogists in Kent Street, Sydney, may have met the steady gaze of a young woman dressed in the fashion of the early 1840s.
Uncovering the musical treasures of Rouse Hill House & Farm
Nicole Forsyth, a professional viola player and casual lecturer at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, is currently researching the Rouse Hill House & Farm sheet music collection for her PhD.
Uncovering the trail of a lost masterpiece
Sydney Living Museums volunteer, author and art historian Robert Holden has devoted his sleuthing skills to the search for a missing life-sized portrait of Irish-born prima donna Catherine Hayes last seen in a photograph from 1917. Can you help with this ongoing mystery?
‘I think of thee’: unlocking a colonial song
The reconstruction of a unique but incomplete copy of a colonial song has allowed us to hear it 170 years after it was composed.
Latest news
Media release
Meroogal Women’s Art Prize 2020 Winners’ AnnouncementWednesday 23 September 2020
The Meroogal Women’s Art Prize celebrates the creativity of female artists in NSW. The 2020 Winners were announced at a modest event at the Meroogal house museum.
Employment
20/CUR003 Assistant Curator (Projects)Monday 21 September 2020
Our favourite images from A Thousand WordsMonday 31 August 2020
Rouse Hill Estate
Play along with us: House Music at Your HouseMonday 17 August 2020
We invite you to join us in a new musical experiment, bringing the music of the 19th century into the 21st century. We’ve delved into the hundreds of popular songs that survive in the collection at Rouse Hill Estate and we’ve also asked some brilliant musicians to help you explore these pieces of music from their homes and in our historic houses.
