Design and Art Australia Online

quilter and embroiderer, was born in Devonshire, England on 27 March 1840. She came to New South Wales with her family in 1842 and her father worked as a shepherd for the Australian Agricultural Company. After spending a short time at Port Stephens, the company’s headquarters, the family moved to the Goonoo Goonoo outstation, near Tamworth. After her father died and her mother remarried, they settled on a farm at Blandford, near Murrurundi, called Balmoral. Mary Jane maintained the farm with her unmarried brother after her mother died in 1891. Although she never married, she had a daughter who married in 1887. At the time of her death, on 1 June 1930, Mary Jane was living with her daughter’s family on their farm, Ivy Home, near Balmoral. She was buried in the Murrurundi Cemetery.

Mary Jane Hannaford was a very devout woman. Earlier in her life she had copied morally uplifting poems, which she decorated with borders and fancy headings, and made samplers, but it seems she did not begin making quilts until 1920, when she was 80 years old. There are seven known quilts initialled 'M.J.H.’, all found in the Parramatta (NSW) district. Her quilt Time 1924, cotton, wool, linen, silk, rayon 164 × 154 cm, embroidered l.r. 'M.J.H. Aged 84 yrs. 1924’ (National Gallery of Australia, purchased 1982) is one of three appliqué patchwork hangings by Mary Jane Hannaford in the National Gallery of Australia’s collection. The others, similar in execution, are Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden and Advance Australia Fair . All three are made of small pieces of various textiles in cotton, wool, linen and silk, probably from a haberdashery sample book, with some wool and rayon embroidery threads used for the fine detail and lettering and an occasional glass bead or sequin denoting an eye.

There are no specifically Australiana motifs in Time , but Advance Australia Fair has a central medallion incorporating Aborigines-the woman carrying a baby on her back, the man a spear-a kangaroo, an emu that has laid two green velvet eggs, and a kookaburra with a snake caught in its beak. A lower medallion has an unlikely mixture of birds and insects, including a rosella, magpie and grasshopper. The angels, which appear as a curious inclusion in Advance Australia Fair and more traditionally in Time and Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden , have been cut out with the aid of a template. Age may have been responsible for the very poor, even crude, quality of the needlework and the poor spelling and reversed 's’s that would otherwise denote a semi-literate artist. All three quilts appear to be autobiographical; Advance Australia emphasises the artist’s patriotism, Adam and Eve her Christian beliefs and Time her ethical principles.

The theme of Time , made when she was an old lady of 84, is human mortality. This is emphasised in the embroidered inscriptions:

A minute how soon it has fled:

And yet how important it is

God calls every moment His own

For all our existence is His

And tho’ we may waste it in folly and play

He notices each that we squander away.

Why should we a minute despise

Because it so quickly is o’er

We know that it rapidly flies

And therefore should prize it the more;

Another indeed may appear in its stead

But that precious moment forever is fled.

Tis easy to squander our years

In idleness folly and strife

But oh! no repentance or tears

Can bring back one moment of life

But time if well spent and improved as it goes

Will render life pleasant, and peaceful its close.

This doggerel verse accompanies the image of a clock, and the theme of the passing of time and the inevitability of death is further emphasised by the verse embroidered above crudely depicted forget-me-nots:

O 'tis a lovely little flower

That blue forget-me-not.

We see it blooming on the grave

Of one who seems forgot.

Above the bust of a bearded Father Time with his scythe and two angels is 'Time, /The mower with his scythe’. A nativity scene, similar to that featured in Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden , is accompanied by a verse from the well-known Christmas carol, 'While shepherds watch’d their flocks by night’ by Nahum Tate (first published in the Supplement to the New Version of the Psalms in 1700)-an affirmation of the artist’s certainty of a Christian heaven, with angels. The most moving of the vignettes, an apparent valedictory self portrait, depicts an old lady, dressed in black and leaning on a walking-stick, addressing a woman and shaking hands with a man who doffs his hat-presumably Mary Jane Hannaford’s daughter and son-in-law. Above this are the lines:

For all our days are passed away; we spend our years as a tale that is told. Farewell my dear ones. Fare thee well.

Beneath it and leading to the artist’s signature is the line, 'May God bless you all. “Good-bye”’.

Mary Jane Hannaford lived on for another six years, dying in 1930 aged 90. Her touching farewell to the world remains as a novel witness to her lifelong Christian faith.

Writers:

McPhee, John

Date written:

1995

Last updated:

2011