b'65319[CIRCLE OF LOUISA ANN MEREDITH] A rare and significant cedar chair with native wildflower embroidery in the manner of Louisa Ann Meredith; the top back of the chair with a rare carved HOBART TOWN Coat of Arms incorporating the latin Sic Fortis Hobartia [Crevit] (Thus grew Hobart strong) flanked by acanthus carvings, circa 1865,99cm high.PROVENANCEBeaumaris, Sandy Bay (Roberts Family); Gowans Auctions, Hobart, the Harry & Christine Wright Collections, 3 June 2005, Lot 915. See also page 251 Australian Furniture, A Pictorial History & Dictionary by Fahy & Simpson.319 (Detail) The embroidery, with its hovering butterflies and Tasmanian wildflowers, including the distinctive Tasmanian waratah, shows the strong influence of the artist Louisa Ann Meredith (1812-1895). Jennifer Isaacs in The Gentle Arts: 200 Years of Australian Womens Domestic & Decorative Arts, 1987, illustrates a similar design of Tasmanian wildflowers by Elsie Maria Benjamin of Perth, Tasmania, c.1865, which she describes astypical of the embroidery being done in Tasmania at that time by a circle of women who followed the style and teaching of Louisa Ann Meredith. The chair design was presumably adapted from an original drawing by Meredith, or was influenced by the plates of Tasmanian wildflowers in her Bush Friends in Tasmania (London 1858). The Launceston Examiner of 5 January 1897 observed that Meredith had herself won a prize for a crewel-work embroidered picture of Tasmanian flowers, set in a Huon-pine frame at the 1851 Great Exhibition in London.The chair has a provenance to the Roberts family of Beaumaris, Sandy Bay, built in 1877-1880 by Henry Llewelyn Roberts (1831-1919), a partner in the agricultural firm of Kemp, Roberts & Co. His wife Mary Grant Roberts (1841-1921) set up the original Beaumaris Zoo, known for its thylacines, with the grounds of the property.$10,00015,000319'