Skip to main content
state library of queensland
  • Home
  • /

  • Cut from a different cloth

Cut from a different cloth

Our panel of experts takes a look at Queensland’s past and future culture and identity through tea towels, travel art, amateur collecting and the changing depiction of Queensland through our enduring motifs.

Hear from historian Emeritus Professor Peter Spearritt; history professor and passionate defender of ‘kitsch’, Amy Clarke, Director of the UQ Anthropology Museum and ARC Research Fellow, Michael Aird, and The Conversation’s Arts & Culture Editor, Jane Howard – as they look at Queensland’s cultural artifacts from 1950 on and explore how we have changed (or not).

They answer important questions such as what drives our urge to collect? Is art printed on a tea towel still art? What types of souvenirs should we have at the Olympics? Are pineapples, surfers and kangaroos still the best way to represent Queensland?

Soak up history and all things nostalgic while you reminisce, remember and see what comes out in the wash.

Presented by State Library of Queensland and The Conversation, the world's leading free, fact-based news source written by academics and edited by journalists. The Conversation is an online independent source of news and views, drawn from university, CSIRO and research institute experts and delivered direct to the public.

Queensland to a T

The Queensland to a T exhibition dishes the dirt on the qualities that made tea towels desirable Queenslandiana and how we see them now. Featuring the Glenn R. Cooke Souvenir Textile Collection, this is a unique look into Queensland’s culture and identity.
Learn more
Gold Coast, 0464a, Glenn R. Cooke Souvenir Textiles Collection, John Oxley Library, State Library of Queensland.