Treasures & curios

This dress belonged to Mrs Matilda Butters, second wife of colourful Melbourne politician and businessman James Stewart Butters. It was first worn at the mayor's fancy dress ball in September 1866, held to celebrate the arrival of the new governor of Victoria, Sir J Manners-Sutton.

The dress was constructed from panels of silk printed with the front pages of Melbourne newspapers. The panels were sewn together to form a bodice, sash and full-length crinoline skirt with train. The skirt, which measured more than five metres around the bottom edge, was made up of 14 panels, each of which were separated and edged with gold braid. The front panels showed the new design for the Town Hall, a portrait of the just-appointed Victorian governor Sir H Manners-Sutton, and Mr Punch as portrayed on the front page of Melbourne Punch. 

To complete her costume, Mrs Butters wore a coronet headdress proclaiming, 'Liberty of the press' and carried a staff with a functioning miniature printing press. Throughout the night she used this press to print lines from Lord Byron's poem 'Lara' onto satin ribbons. The dress was in fact such a hit Mrs Butters wore it on a number of subsequent occasions.

The dress was made by Mrs William Dobbs of Gardiners Creek Road, South Yarra, about whom little else is known. The papers featured on the dress were The Age, Argus, Weekly Age, Leader, Australasian, Herald, Bell’s Life, Spectator, Journal of Commerce, Government Gazette, Dicker’s Mining Record, Illustrated Australian News, and Punch.

The majority of the panels for the skirt and train were printed from the actual plates and type of the newspapers by Blundell & Ford, a well-known Melbourne printing firm. The exceptions were the Argus and Government Gazette, who printed their own panels.

Widely regarded as one of the great 19th-century printed works in Australia, the silk panels of printed newspaper are still readable – testament to the skill of the printers.

Today all that's left of the costume is the skirt and part of the sash. Thanks to funding from the Violet Chalmers Bequest, the dress has undergone extensive conservation treatment.