Page 12 - Bulletin 7 2003

9

porcelain and glass 3655 – 3708, furniture 4638 – 4993 and 5969 – 6080, with a few
smaller batches elsewhere.

For his furniture photographs, Elliott must have worked in collaboration with

collectors such as Major Jardine and Florence Phillips. He made the same error of

judgement as they did, together with authors like Pearse and Fehr somewhat later,
namely to regard as worthy of attention only the sophisticated furniture of Cape

Town and its immediate surroundings, preferably of before 1800, and to disregard
the many charming rural varieties of furniture of a slightly later period. As a result,

many of these latter pieces must have been lost simply because they had nowhere
been described in the books or displayed in the museums. Good rural pieces now

fetch high prices, too, and are at least as interesting to the cultural historian because

of their regional differences and interactions of style. That Elliott had as little eye for
them as did his collector acquaintances is particularly strange, as in the closely

related field of architecture he was the first to cover some of the most modest

structures farther afield. Equally amazing is the fact that he did not photograph more
interiors of farmhouses; where he did, such as at Libertas (with its mural paintings),

Vergelegen, Schoongezicht or Parel Vallei, these were obviously the homes of
collectors.

Elliott’s few hundred photographs of the more sophisticated town-type furniture,

however, are in themselves of considerable importance. They constitute one of the

most extensive study collections available even today, though they lack essential
information such as dimensions and materials and often whereabouts. Full sets of

prints of these photographs should be in the possession of every museum or
educational institution studying the material culture of the Cape: the Archives

provides these at a relatively low cost. There are some mouth-watering pictures
among them, for instance those of show-rooms at Ashley’s Galleries literally stacked

with high-class Cape antiques, rows of the finest armoires or display cabinets and

shelves full of Imari porcelain waiting for buyers, whereas today it is a great
occasion if one piece like these comes up for auction. Most pieces must obviously