Old Sinhalese nursery rhymes and folk songs

Collected and illustrated by Heather Hamer. With a Foreword by Sir Solomon Dias Bandaranaike, K.C.M.G. Ceylon : The Colombo Apothecaries Co., Ltd., 1935. Quarto, gilt-lettered diced road, lightly scuffed and worn, pp. [36], illustrated with twelve full page black and white illustrations by Hamer, with tissue guards, illustrating in modernist style the nursery rhymes.

Heather Hamer was born in Adelaide in 1885 to William Gatley Hammond and Clara Agnes Brown, who were first cousins. She married Sylvester Richmond Hamer (known as ‘Rex) and moved to Ceylon where she published a number of books on Sinhalese culture. She exhibited her drawings in Adelaide and Perth, where they were highly praised, the Art Gallery of South Australia acquiring a number of her pieces.

‘The exhibition of imaginative illustrations in black and white, by Mrs. Bex Hamer (better known, perhaps, as Heather Hammond), to be opened this afternoon by Lady Bonython at the gallery of the Royal South Australian Society of Arts, is unique and intensely interesting. To an extensive knowledge of Sinhalese history and legend. Mrs. Hamer has been able to add her undoubted gifts of facile freehand drawing, and a correct sense of perspective and proportion, as well as a sensitive gradation of line, and contrast in blacking in. To the uninitiated, the effect secured by an ordinary mapping pen, and a brush, will be surprising, as will also be the amount of detail devoted to costumes and their varied motifs. This work particularly has to be as carefully executed as it would be in the woven material itself, and Mrs. Hamer has been very successful through her careful and clean draughtsmanship, in securing a general effect of reality, though never monotonous in its details. The artist has a vivid imagination and versatility, which have inspired her to express on paper her love for the symbolism of her adopted country.’ – The Advertiser (Adelaide) Tuesday 21 April 1936.

Rare, with only two copies recorded on Trove (National Library of Australia; State Library of South Australia).