Caroline Simpson Collection
Chinese export ware punchbowl c1785. Caroline Simpson Collection, HHT.
In 2004 the four children of the late Caroline Simpson OAM (1930-2003) gifted their mother’s outstanding collection of Australian colonial furniture, pictures and objets d’art, plus an important collection of pictures of other colonial places around the world, to the Historic Houses Trust and, at the same time, provided an endowment for the HHT’s library which has been renamed in her honour.
The collection has been dispersed among the HHT’s properties. Some important items of colonial furniture have been placed at Elizabeth Bay House and at Vaucluse House. A collection of David Moore photographs has gone to the Museum of Sydney, along with two Sydney Cove medallions made by Josiah Wedgwood in 1789 to commemorate European settlement at Sydney Cove. Other items now form part of the collections of Government House and Hyde Park Barracks Museum.
Many of the pictures, including a collection of Conrad Martens’ watercolours and drawings, are part of the library collection and can be found through searching the HHT’s Pictures Catalogue.
The collection has been dispersed among the HHT’s properties. Some important items of colonial furniture have been placed at Elizabeth Bay House and at Vaucluse House. A collection of David Moore photographs has gone to the Museum of Sydney, along with two Sydney Cove medallions made by Josiah Wedgwood in 1789 to commemorate European settlement at Sydney Cove. Other items now form part of the collections of Government House and Hyde Park Barracks Museum.
Many of the pictures, including a collection of Conrad Martens’ watercolours and drawings, are part of the library collection and can be found through searching the HHT’s Pictures Catalogue.