Artificial flowers

Passion flowers, fuchsias . . . these are just two of the flowers that fifteen-year-old Mary Hannah Tyer embroidered for this colourful arrangement. She also fashioned stamens for the flowers from wax, and hand painted some geranium leaves. She then placed the whole bouquet in a turquoise coloured vase, and set it under a glass dome.

Mary Tyer went to Mrs Swainson’s school for girls on Fitzherbert Terrace in Thorndon, Wellington, and was probably the eldest of twelve children. Her parents, Alfred and Hannah Tyer, were among the first farmers in Johnsonville, just out of Wellington. Alfred Tyer was a pioneering exporter of hides, skins, tallow, and meat.

Mary Tyer entered this piece, and many other examples of her craftwork, in the juvenile class (under 16 years) of the Home Industry Branch of the 1885 New Zealand Industrial Exhibition, held in Wellington.

An exhibition catalogue described the Home Industry Branch as ‘all industries developed with small expenditure within the schools and homes of the colony’. Julius Vogel, the Colonial Treasurer at the time, and instigator of the Industrial Exhibition, believed that ‘home industry’ was as important as any of the large commercial industries in that exhibition.

Mary Tyer’s work won first prize for these flowers and a special mention for her general exhibit of needlework, which also included an embroidered rug. She also took every other medal in the juvenile section, and received a silver medal for the exhibition overall.

The commemorative catalogue that was published for the exhibition gives her a special mention: ‘Amongst the juvenile exhibitors, the foremost is unquestionably MARY H. TYER, Ngahauranga [sic]. This young lady sends a large case of remarkably fine work in wool, silk and string, lacework, leatherwork and artificial flowers. The number of articles in her case is astounding and it is not too much to say that Miss Tyer is within herself the very personification of ‘home industry’.