sketcher, designer, illuminator and decorator, was born in Cambridgeshire, England, where he seems to have learnt the craft of marbling and graining. In 1851 he showed examples of this work at the Great Exhibition in London, giving his address as March, Cambridgeshire, his profession as designer. He migrated to Melbourne soon afterwards. There he went into partnership with Henry Davies as a decorator and signwriter. Smith won medals at the 1854 Melbourne and the 1856 Victorian Industrial Society’s exhibitions for examples of his faux marbling and wood graining. In about 1855 he moved to Williamstown and formed a partnership with William Fisher as paperhangers, glaziers and decorators; this was dissolved about 1861. Smith then spent a short time as a clerk in the Victorian Railways, resigning in April 1864. He was town clerk of Williamstown for the next thirty years.
Smith received many commissions for illuminated addresses from the mid 1850s onwards. At the 1861 Victorian Exhibition he was awarded a first-class certificate for his illuminated penmanship. He undertook the illumination of the municipal statistics for both the Footscray and Williamstown borough councils, shown by the commissioners at the 1861 Exhibition (now La Trobe Library). At the 1866 Melbourne Intercolonial Exhibition his illuminated writing was awarded a medal. Smith’s pen sketches of buildings drawn in the 1860s were used for advertisements in Melbourne street directories as well as for illustrations in local journals.
George Smith married Anne Marie, daughter of Mary and Captain Thomas Hawke Sutton (a Port Phillip pilot) and step-daughter of Thomas Mason, a well-known Williamstown citizen. She died on 12 February 1874. He died on 30 March 1909 and was buried in the Williamstown Cemetery.
- Writers:
- Darragh, Thomas A.
staffcontributor
- Date written:
- 1992
- Last updated:
- 2011
