• Title
  'Tost and Rohu's Museum and Showrooms, 10, 11 and 12 Moore Street, Sydney', [ca. 1878-ca. 1920]
• Creator
  Tost and Rohu's Museum and Showrooms
• Call number
  SSV/156
  
• Level of description
  fonds
• Date
  
  [ca. 1878-ca. 1920]
• Type of material
  Graphic Materials, Drawings
• Reference code
  9611525
• Physical Description
  1 drawing - ink and gouache on paper mounted on cardboard - 16 x 12 cm. on mount 23 x 16 cm.
  
• ADMINISTRATIVE/ BIOGRAPHICAL HISTORY
  
  Jane Catharine Tost (1817?-1889) and Ada Jane Rohu (1848-1928), mother and daughter, were English taxidermists. The Tost family arrived by ship to Tasmania in 1856, and by 1860 settled in Sydney. Jane had worked at the British Museum in the 1840s and 1850s preparing specimens under John Gould's direction.
  
  In Sydney she offered her services as a naturalist from the family home in Bridge Street, before being employed in 1864 as a taxidermist at the Australian Museum along with her husband.
  
  In 1872 Jane and Ada opened 'Tost & Coates Berlin Wool Depot and Taxidermists' at 60 William Street Sydney, catering to a growing middle-class taste for fancy work and stuffed animals in interior decoration, as well as to scientific collectors and museums. In 1878 after Ada remarried, they became Tost & Rohu, selling an eclectic mix of furs, stuffed animals, opals, and Aboriginal and Pacific Island artefacts at Moore Street Sydney (Martin Place).
  
  From the 1890s the company claimed to stock the largest collection of Pacific Islander and Australian material in the country. During the early 1900s, a museum was created above the shop, and during the 1930s Tost & Rohu, Taxidermists, Furriers and Curiosity Shop was known as “The Queerest Shop in Australia”.
  
  Source: Library correspondence file.
• Scope and Content
  'Tost and Rohu's Museum and Showrooms, 10, 11 and 12 Moore Street, Sydney' is a hand painted advertisement by an unknown artist depicting a decorative design of Aboriginal boomerangs and shields. The advertisement is affixed to cardboard which has an indistinct wet stamp on verso for October 1913.
• Copying Conditions
  Out of copyright: Creator died before 1955
  Please acknowledge:: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
• Description source
  
  Titled from advertisement.
• Date note
  
  No date. Date based on time the museum commenced in Moore Street, Sydney, and including the date of the stamp of 1913.
• Name
  Tost, Jane Catharine, 1817?-1889
  Rohu, Ada Jane, 1848-1928
  Tost and Rohu's Museum and Showrooms
  
• Subject
  Museums--New South Wales--Sydney.
  Advertising--Specimens
  
• Topic
  commercial art
  
• Place
  Moore Street (Sydney, N.S.W.)
  
• Open Rosetta viewer
  IE20034754

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