Convicts & Colonials: Homewares & Furnishings

Early homeware and furnishings

Ian Evans in "The Australian Home" wrote:

Much of the furniture used in Australia during the early period of settlement was made in England and imported, either by newly arriving settlers or by enterprising merchants. Settlers who arrived without furniture often made their own, or had it knocked together by a carpenter or cabinetmaker. Their needs were few and basic: some chairs or stools, a table or two, a bed and perhaps a lidded chest or chest of drawers.

Advertisements in The Moreton Bay Courier under Sale by Auction in the 1840 and 1850s, list household furniture for Drawing rooms, dining rooms, bedrooms and kitchens, including:

• Four-post bedstead
• Mattrass (Matress)
• Bedroom and brass candlesticks
• Chests of Drawers
• Looking Glasses (mirrors)
• Camphor Wood Trunks/Chests (storing linen and sheets)
• Wash Stands (timber cupboard/stand to hold a basin and pitcher set used for washing the face and brushing teeth)
• Chamber Pots (a bowl kept in a bedroom to use as a toilet at night)
• Cheffonier (Dressing Tables, Duchess)
• Pictures
• Chairs (horse hair, cane, rattan)
• Couches
• Sofas
• Dining Tables Escritoire (small writing desk/cabinet with drawers)
• Loo Tables (for playing the card game 'lanterloo')
• Carpets and rugs
• Lamps
• Iron Chest (storage box)
• Patent Mangle (clothes were squeezed between two rollers to remove water - a manual version of the spin cycle on a modern washing machine)
• Patent Water Closet (outhouses)
• Fender (low metal fireplace surround/barrier)
• Fire Irons (metal rod used to stoke a fire)
• Pianos and Pianofortes
• Crockery Glass
• Kitchen Utensils