POWERHOUSE COLLECTION

Goldfields brooch commissioned by Edward Austin

Object No. A4478

In May 1851, a few months after Edward Hammond Hargraves had published his discovery of gold, Bathurst shopkeeper Edward Austin arrived in Sydney with a nugget weighing about 225 grams. According to The Sydney Morning Herald (15 May 1851) it created 'a great sensation'. Austin's find fanned the excitement that was to shake the colony and create a rush to the Bathurst region. Choosing to remain in Bathurst, Austin made his fortune by providing diggers with credit to buy mining tools and then afterwards purchasing their gold. He commemorated his success with this brooch, which he gave to his wife, Mary Ann. For Austin, the brooch underscored a life of ups and downs. Born Elias Arnstein, a Bavarian Jew, he was apprenticed as a tailor when he went to England in 1831. After only two days in London, he was arrested and sentenced to seven years transportation for stealing a ring and two brooches. The Austin brooch belongs to a group of 'goldfields' brooches of a type made exclusively in Australia from local gold between the mid 1850s and the mid 1860s. Massive and ostentatious, most were melted down when smaller brooches began to be favoured in the following decades or when they were sold for much-needed cash during the depression of the 1890s. Only a few have survived and most are not marked. Their provenance has been long forgotten. Typically, goldfields or digger brooches featured miniatures of mining equipment arranged in an oval or rectangular design and worked onto a pin. The tiny mining tools were formed either by sawing or casting and then soldered together. The more complex designs incorporated crossed picks and shovels, mattocks, winches, buckets, sluice-boxes, gabs of gold, revolvers and small figures of miners turning windlasses, all set within foliate, wreath-like frameworks. Goldfields pins and rings were bought by lucky diggers and merchants to commemorate the travails of the goldfields. A brooch, however, was usually made as a present from a lucky digger to his 'woman'. Although expensive, they were also acquired as souvenirs by visitors to goldfields as 'proofs of colonial advancement'. Early goldfields jewellery was often made by adventurous immigrant jewellers who, after unsuccessful attempts as miners on the goldfields, set up jewellery shops in gold townships. By the mid 1850s, a range of goldfields brooches and rings could be purchased or commissioned from large city establishments. Further reading: L. Mitchell, Goldfields jewellery in 'Decorative arts and design from the Powerhouse Museum', Powerhouse Publishing, 1991, p61 E. Czernis-Ryl (ed), 'Australian gold and silver 1851-1900', Powerhouse Publishing 1995, pp14-15 E . Buttler-Bowdon, Golden memories, in 'Australian gold and silver 1851-1900', Powerhouse Publishing 1995, pp 36-45