Bungalook basketry and rafia hats.

/ With photographic illustrations. Cover title: Bungalook basketry : a new handicraft and a profitable hobby. What can be done with stringy-bark. Also how to make rafia hats. Melbourne : Printed by Fitchett Brothers Pty. Ltd., 376 Swanston Street, [1918]. Small octavo (180 x 120 mm), publisher’s stapled illustrated wrappers (lightly marked) with original owner’s name and date ‘B. M. Ricardo, 1921’ inscribed in fountain pen; title with mounted newspaper cutting (a contemporary review of the book); pp. 29, with numerous b/w photographic illustrations; bottom corners somewhat dog-eared, otherwise a very good copy.

Trove locates no copies in Australian libraries.

This scarce little booklet on the craft of weaving stringybark, authored by Ringwood (Melbourne) resident Henrietta Walker, received the following review in the Melbourne Leader, 21 December 1918, at the time it was first published:

‘BUNGALOOK BASKETRY. A small handbook has just been published by Henrietta C. Walker (so long known to “Leader” readers as “Cynthia”) on Bungalook basketry, which promises to be what its creator claims for it, a profitable hobby, as well as a new handicraft. Bungalook is the native name for stringy-bark, and as that material is most abundant in Australia the worker really only needs to learn how to put it to advantage after preparing it for use. This booklet gives fullest directions in Mrs. Walker’s well-known clear style that carries the amateur step by step unerringly to the last phase of basketry or mat making. Her utilisation of this tough and durable fibre for floor mats has attracted widespread attention, and her originality in pioneering tile use of this supposedly waste material is believed to have paved the way for a national industry. Besides the instructions for the use of stringy-bark, Mrs. Walker has included a chapter on the making of rafia hats, so that the purchasers of the booklet will get an exceedingly cheap shilling’s worth.’

This publication would seem to have preceded another by Henrietta Walker, Bungalook basketry : what you can make from bark, flax, and rafia (held: NLA and Monash University Library).