Tea cup decorated with Hobart Regatta transfer

This porcelain teacup is decorated with a blue and cream transfer print featuring a scene from the Hobart Regatta. It is also decorated with yellow and pink flowers with green leaves on the front. It bears the manufacturer’s mark on the base and was made in England. The Hobart Regatta was a major sporting and social event in Tasmania's calendar year. The Hobart Regatta was inaugurated in 1838, a year after the first Sydney regatta, under the patronage of the Governor’s wife, Lady Jane Franklin. Far more than just a yacht race, the regatta celebrated the anniversary of Abel Tasman’s ‘discovery’ of the island in 1642. It demonstrated the patronage of civil and military elites, promoted the role of whaling and other free-settler enterprises, and even removed some of the colony’s convict stain.

By the early 1900s ‘the greatest aquatic carnival South of the Line’ had evolved as the ‘perfect people’s carnival’. Boat races competed with other novelty entertainments—fancy costume parades, bearded ladies, snake charmers. Tasmanians still uphold the supremacy of their regatta tradition and regional identity.