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Image Not Available for Postcards collected by Muriel Binney
Postcards collected by Muriel Binney
Image Not Available for Postcards collected by Muriel Binney

Postcards collected by Muriel Binney

Date1910-1930
Object numberANMS0236
NameArchive series
ClassificationsEphemera
Credit LineANMM Collection Gift from Jerry Grover
DescriptionThis archive series includes two postcards collected by amateur artist and inventor Muriel Binney, the first depicting a park scene with a rotunda, and the second a Sydney Harbour view seen from Elizabeth Bay.HistoryMuriel Mary Sutherland Binney (1873-1949), was an amateur artist and inventor. She lived at Warren Lodge, Elizabeth Bay, with her surgeon husband Edward and sons John and Richard. In 1907 Binney painted a 20-metre-long panorama of Sydney Harbour entitled ‘Sydney Harbour foreshores at sunset’. She produced the work for the First Australian Exhibition of Women’s Work in October 1907, and it was then selected for the Australian Pavilion at the Franco-British Exhibition the following year where it was awarded a silver medal. Binney used a variety of working and leisure craft to produce a balanced, harmonious and eye-catching panorama of harbour life. As a panorama it is unusual, completed at a time when most other examples of this genre were photographic. Although Binney did not put a price on her work, she was certainly aware of its commercial potential, and applied to copyright the design in 1907 and to reproduce a fold-out postcard or Christmas card of photographs of the frieze in panoramic format by Henry King. It was inventing rather than arts and crafts that Binney pursued in later years, exhibiting and patenting a cigarette smoker’s complete outfit, a portable shoe stand and travelling case, and a body harness to redistribute body weight when using a crutch.