Memoirs of the Queensland Museum – Culture 10

Indigenised Souvenirs and Homewares in the Glenn Cooke Collection

Authors

Barnard, T.

Citation

Barnard, T. 2016. Indigenised Souvenirs and Homewares in the Glenn Cooke Collection. Memoirs of the Queensland Museum – Culture 10: 107-115. Brisbane. ISSN 2205-3220

Date published

December 2016

DOI

https://doi.org/10.17082/j.2205-3239.10.2016-08

Key words

Glenn Cooke, North Queensland, Indigenous motifs, Wet Tropics, rainforest shields, Indigenised souvenirs

Abstract

This paper offers an interpretive evaluation of a collection that was donated to the Queensland Museum by Mr Glenn R. Cooke. The collection consists of 1,395 souvenir tourist objects and items of domestic homeware decorated with indigenised motifs that were manufactured for the Australian market between the 1930s and the 1980s. The motifs on many of the objects are based on traditional designs of rainforest Aboriginal groups from the Wet Tropics of North Queensland, misappropriated by non-Indigenous artists and craft-workers. Research into the sources of the motifs traces the transformation of the original designs into decorative patterns for domestic homeware and tourist products.