The Atlas of the Australasian Colonies

James McKain Meek
De Gruchy and Leigh (printer)
Historical and Descriptive Atlas of the British Colonies in Continental and Insular Australia 1861
photolithograph
205.7 x 120.4cm (irreg.)
Art Gallery of Ballarat
Purchased with funds from the Joe White Bequest, 2015

Meek was termed “one of the renowned Wonders of the World, in consequence of the atlas he has published”. Just as wondrous was the frame made for it by James Martin. It cost over £500, featured a riot of different native woods provided by Ferdinand Mueller, the Government Botanist, and was carved by Felix Terlecki in various styles of the tenth to the sixteenth centuries. Even the back of the frame was a work of art, presenting the design of the Atlas in inlaid work of eighty different Australian woods. This prize-winning work must have been a breathtaking Victorian extravaganza. Copies of the Atlas, with descriptive pamphlet, were two guineas each.