Design and Art Australia Online

professional woodcarver, was born at 1 Coleharbour Street, Hackney Road, London, on 31 October 1841, son of Samuel Cunningham, a sawmill owner, and Sophia Lanham, and evidently served his apprenticeship as a woodcarver in London. On 12 July 1862, aged twenty and working as a 'looking glass frame maker’ from his father’s sawmill at Bethnal Green, he married dressmaker Ann Maria Jarvis, four years his senior, at Ebenezer Chapel, Bethnal Green. The couple migrated to New Zealand soon after their marriage; their first child, Alice, was born in the Auckland suburb of Parnell on 10 May 1863 (she died just after Christmas 1882). When the Waikato War broke out in July, the Cunninghams decided they would be safer in Australia and sailed for Sydney later that year.

James’s first commission in NSW was carving a Royal Coat of Arms for Hartley Court House, signed and dated 1863. A second daughter, Clara, was born in their home in Druitt Street, Sydney on 15 July 1864 but died the following April. Arthur was born on 4 September 1865, followed two years later by William (died March 1868). By then, the family were living in rented premises and moving regularly. Another short-lived son was born in 1869. James became increasingly committed to the Baptist Church, including the Ashfield Baptist 'Life Boat’ and 'Band of Hope’. He was deacon at Ashfield Church from 1884.

According to Sands’ Directory for 1869, James Cunningham was then established as a woodcarver in partnership with William Quill at 117 Liverpool Street, Sydney. By 1870 he was in business for himself at 101 Liverpool Street, where he remained until moving to 368 Pitt Street (c.1883-92) and finally to 85 Goulburn Street (c.1893-1903). The Liverpool Street business, housed on the ground floor of a two-storey terrace with the family living upstairs in three rooms over the workshop (seen in a cdv by Beaufoy Merlin 's American and Australasian Photographic Company, c.1870, ill. Wade and Conroy, p.162) was a continuation of the business started by Edward Oram ). In 1874 the Cunninghams rented a separate private residence in Elizabeth Street, Waterloo, where their last child, Mabel, was born in 1876.

In about 1879 the Cunninghams moved into their own home, 'Milton Villa’, Prospect (now Cromwell) Street, Ashfield, recorded in a cdv by F. Stubbs & Co American Photo Company dated 15 June 1882. They owned another weatherboard house next door, which they rented out. Both are extant, the family home at no.24 being richly decorated, with timber Corinthian capitals topping the verandah posts, leafy curved bargeboards on the side gables, fretwork canopies over the second-storey windows and attic vent, and carved brackets under the sills. The interior carving includes double acanthus brackets in the hallway. James also made most of the furniture, much of which is now owned by one of his granddaughters. This includes a wardrobe, davenport desk, medicine chest (c.1890), art nouveau picture frames (c.1900) – one incorporating native flannel flowers – a drawing-room sofa and two armchairs, a sideboard (c.1880-90), wall brackets, at least six balloon-back chairs and an occasional table, all in cedar, and boards for playing Chinese chequers.

Cunningham advertised in the 1885 Sands’ Directory as an 'Architectural and General Wood Carver’. He carried out many architectural commissions, though few can be identified now. He is known to have carved three official coats-of-arms in cedar for court houses at Hartley, Sydney (c.1870) and Kempsey (c.1897). The Sydney Royal Coat of Arms was removed to the Chief Justice’s chambers in a new office block in Macquarie Street in the late 1970s when the original Supreme Court building was demolished. Descendants believe he also did carvings at Sydney Town Hall.

Given his strong religious commitment, Cunningham inevitably did much eccesiatical work, notably the carved decoration and furniture for the Baptist churches at Ashfield and Stanmore, including the pulpit decoration and a Gothic Revival screen for the former (erected 1885). When this building was demolished, his pulpit (c.1886) was re-erected in the present church in Holden Street, Ashfield, along with a small table he had carved. His lectern for All Saints’ Anglican Cathedral, Bathurst (c.1872), is now in Karingal Village. His descendants state that he also did carvings for St Saviour’s Anglican Cathedral, Goulburn and for St Mary’s Catholic and St Andrew’s Anglican Cathedrals in Sydney. An oak eagle lectern in the last is of the same design as Cunningham’s Bathurst lectern, so was clearly by his firm. He did the carving and turnings on the cases housing organs by William Davidson at Bathurst, Cobbity, Morpeth, the Wesleyan church at Parramatta, and Yass (revealed in Davidson’s insolvency application). His best known work today is probably the case of the Strasburg Clock model, built by R.B. Smith in 1887-89 and acquired for Sydney’s Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (Powerhouse Museum) in 1890. Working from a photograph, he mistakenly incorporated a curved staircase into his replica, which is actually part of the church.

In 1902, after the children had grown up, James, Ann Maria and the unmarried Lilly moved into a new brick semi-detached house at 28 Temple Street, Stanmore. From there, James commuted by train to his city business. He died suddenly on 8 December 1903, aged sixty-two, and was buried in the plot in the Baptist (now Independent) section of Rookwood Cemetery (lot no 249), where his daughter Alice had been buried nineteen years earlier. His fellow Baptist and Mason, Rev. Frederick Hibbard, wrote his obituary.

Writers:

Staff Writer

Date written:

1999

Last updated:

2011