Hōgyoku (active late 19th century), Decorated emu egg with scholar c 1890, Japan, lacquered using the Shibayama technique. Emu egg, gold, silver, black, patinated metal, mother-of-pearl, 15.3 cm, 8.5 cm (diam). Collection: Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide, Ellen Christensen Bequest Fund 2004, 20049A196

Northern bollygum, Blepharocarya involucrigera (Anacardiaceae; Peter Crossing Collection 163/1- 24). Proof engraving, 51 × 35 cm, ‘[ink] Amyroides juglandifolia’, ‘G Sibelius’, from copper plate by Gerard Sibelius, after John Cleveley’s 1775 watercolour, based on Parkinson’s surviving pencil drawing with Banks’s ink inscription ‘Endeavours River’; Wattung-urree or old man banksia, Banksia serrata (Proteaceae; Peter Crossing Collection) 163/1-2). Proof engraving, 46 × 31 cm, ‘[ink ] 2.’ bottom right, from

Glenn R Cooke, then Research Curator, Queensland Heritage, at the Queensland Art Gallery, leading a tour through the exhibition Vida Lahey: Colour and Modernism, QAG, October 2010. Photograph: Natasha Harth, image courtesy QAGOMA. Glenn has paused in front of Vida Lahey’s Art and Nature (1934), with its vivid orange flowers.

Illustration from the Holy Roman Emperor King Frederick II of Sicily’s falconry book De Arte Venandi cum Avibus (The Art of Hunting with Birds), 1241–1248. Codex Ms. Pal. Lat 1071, folio 18v & 20v © [2018] Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Città del Vaticano, Rome.