Hand-Painted A.G.M. Rifle Club Notice Board, Spotswood

$650.00

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Hand-Painted A.G.M. Rifle Club Notice Board, Spotswood

All objects

KOBK.26.OBJ.171

Hand-Painted A.G.M. Rifle Club Notice Board, Spotswood

$650.00

Specifications

Australia, Spotswood, Victoria, mid-20th century

Attributed to the A.G.M. Rifle Club, formed 1936 by employees of the Australian Glass works at Spotswood, on the range named in the lettering

Painted board, the headings in yellow on a green chalk-writing ground

82.5 cm high, 62.5 cm wide, 2 cm deep in the frame

Lettered: NOTICE. ALL TEAM MEMBERS ARE ASKED TO ASSEMBLE AT A.G.M. RANGE BEFORE DEPARTING ON VISITING SHOOTS

Scratched into the paint: I love Andrew

Framed by KOBK in Tasmanian blackwood

Honest age: paint loss around all four edges and heaviest along the lower edge, old fixing holes through the board, the six chalk panels worn back to bare board

Every KOBK object is one of one and carries its age honestly. Expect marks, wear and patina as part of the piece; any specific fault is noted above. Where an object is photographed on a stand, the stand is included.

Notes

In June 1936 employees of the Australian Glass Bottle Works at Spotswood formed a rifle club and joined No. 21 Union of the Victorian Rifle Association. Forty of them had their first practice shoot that Saturday, over five hundred yards at Williamstown. Their own range was called the A.G.M., which is the range named on this board.

The headings are sign-written and permanent. The six places where the details changed each week were left blank to be chalked in, the A team and the B team, the club being visited, the date, the departure time.

Through the late thirties the club shot the Miniature Rifle Union pennant against Brunswick City, Moreland, Collingwood, Fairfield, Footscray and Geelong. By the late forties they were out at three hundred, five hundred and six hundred yards. At Easter 1949 the Sydney A.G.M. club came down to shoot the Melbourne men for the G. O. Simcock Shield, were taken to Diggers Rest for the day and given dinner in the works cafeteria at Spotswood, and lost at the Williamstown range by eight points.

Only the chalk panels have worn, six rectangles gone through to the board while everything the sign painter meant to last is still sharp. Someone has scratched I love Andrew into the green above the rule.