An essential reference for curators, private collectors, dealers, auctioneers, investors, social and cultural historians, includes entries for 660 Australian furniture and picture frame makers, retailers and
designers - the result of seven year's gallery, museum, library, newspaper and field research. Superbly illustrated with over 1000 photographs, 600 in colour.

Australian Furniture: Pictorial History and Dictionary 1788-1938 is the most comprehensive survey of quality furniture, its marks and makers, yet undertaken in this country. A natural progression from the authors' previous works, Early Colonial Furniture in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land (1972) and Nineteenth Century Australian Furniture (1985), this volume is designed to further assist in the accurate identification and dating of furniture made in this country prior to the outbreak of World War II.

Divided into two sections, the first, a dictionary, includes over 660 entries. Biographies of makers, retailers and designers, by whom an item of furniture with a mark or label is known to survive, are compiled from seven years of painstaking documentary and field research. Professional furniture makers and skilled amateurs are entered alike, as are the hitherto ignored endeavours of the picture frame maker. Among
those listed are immigrant German cabinet-makers; including those arriving in South Australia from the late 1830s who continued to produce furniture in the Biedermeier style for their self-contained
communities; and Chinese cabinet-makers, flooding into Australia in search of gold in the 1850s and 60s, who quickly adapted their traditions and skills to furniture making for a market with largely British taste.