Saddle-back chairs (made up of bundles of newspapers), from Hugh McCrae, Story-book only, Sydney, Angus and Robertson, 1948, State Library Victoria

Members of Marcus Clarke’s Yorick Club included fellow writers Henry Kendall, George Gordon McCrae and Adam Lindsay Gordon. With a human skull for a mascot and rules that parodied the gentlemen’s clubs of establishment Melbourne, Yorick members gathered in rooms adjoining the offices of Melbourne Punch to smoke clay pipes, drink from pewter mugs, recite poetry and generally engage in horseplay. Money was tight so they constructed club chairs, appropriately, from bundles of newspapers.