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Domestic & Community Life Collection
Image: Recipe Book - The New Sunshine Cookery Book
Source: Museum Victoria
The Domestic and Communtiy Life collection takes in a large sweep of the material culture of everyday life. It comprises several thousand objects, several thousand images, hundreds of documents, and a small number of sound recordings and intangible representations related to the lives and identities that Victorians have created for themselves at home and in their wider communities since European settlement.
The collection is underpinned by five interrelated themes: the home, domestic life, domestic ideology, community life and identity, with a focus on significant periods of domestic life dating from European settlement in Victoria to the present.
It is most significant in relation to domestic life in early to mid-20th-century Victoria, in particular regarding the technologies and tools used in food preparation, cooking, storage and preservation, cleaning and laundry.
Significant items
- A cot used by Richmond Henty in 1837.
- A Wolter and Echberg washing machine, designed and manufactured in Melbourne around the 1880s.
- An extensive collection of early to mid 20th century domestic appliances, including vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, washing machines and stoves.
- 32 architectural models of domestic buildings in Melbourne, 1839-1989.
- Images documenting domestic and community life, particularly the Biggest Family Album collections.
- The Graeme Fullarton Collection which records the experience of building a new home in East Keilor in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
- The Aldred Photograph Collection.
- The State Electricity Photograph Collection.
- The Laurie Richards Photograph Collection.
Items per page: 10 50 (showing 1 - 10) 2420 items
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Butter Churn - Wooden, circa 1950s
Wooden butter churn. Used by Bill Boyd when assisting his grandmother to churn butter in the 1950s. The William Boyd Childhood Collection includes most of the childhood possessions of W ...
From: Churchlands, Australia Images: 3 -
Folder - Melbourne Underground Rail Loop Authority, circa 1980
Publicity folder issued by Melbourne Underground Rail Loop Authority to commemorate the construction of the City Loop underground railway project. It contains a number of images of the ...
Images: 2 -
Banner - Children Out for Christmas, Refugee Action Collective, Oct 2004
Banner 'Children Out for Christmas' made by the Refugee Action Collective around October 2004 and used at various protest rallies. The Refugee Action Collective has grown out of a natio ...
Images: 2 -
Sock - Mrs. Ruby Tyler, Green Wool, 2009
Single woollen bed sock knitted by Mrs. Ruby Tyler in Queensland. Mrs. Tyler, a former resident of Mt. Waverley in Victoria, usually knits bedsocks for patients in her local hospital in ...
Images: 1 -
Seed Sample - Trigonella foenum-graecum (Leguminosae), 1887
Sample of Fenugreek seeds from India contained in a glass jar with stopper. This was collected and prepared by T.N.Mukharji as part of his work for the Indian Botanical Gardens. It was ...
Images: 2 -
Hurricane Lamp - Newmarket Saleyards, Newmarket, after 1933
Railway lamp used at the Newmarket Railway siding. Alternative Names: Railway Lamp, Lantern, Kerosene/Oil Lamp; Hurricane Lamp; Cold Blast Lamp. Oil fed lamps entered into the rail ind ...
Images: 1 -
Sampler - Lydia Hooper, circa 1911-1912
Two cardboard sheets with samples of different kinds of needlework, made by Lydia Hooper, circa 1911-1912. The sampler includes samples of gathering, pleating, hems, patches, seams, but ...
Images: 2 -
Badge - R.M.S. Narkunda, circa 1927
Badge from the R.M.S. Narkunda, circa 1927, which was acquired by Constance Duffell during her migrant journey to Australia. Constance Duffell was born in England in 1910. She migrated ...
Images: 1 -
Box - Taranto's, 'Three in One', 1962
Gelati box used by the Taranto company in 1962. Taranto's Ice Cream Company was founded by Angelo Taranto and his wife Ernesta in 1960 under the name of Taranto's Continental Gelati an ...
Images: 2 -
Matchbox Cover - Five Roads Service Station, circa 1950s
Metal matchbox cover purchased at the Five Roads service station in Carlton, by Mrs Vilma Barcovich, an Italian migrant.
Images: 2



