Australia Day Honours: Geoff Hannah

Australia Day Honours List
Geoffrey Stewart Hannah, NSW
For service to the visual arts through the production of furniture and marquetry

On January 26, 2018, much loved woodworker and furniture maker extraordinaire Geoff Hannah received an OAM on the Australia Day Honour’s list.

‘I thought it was a bloody joke when I got the letter’, said Geoff when I phoned to congratulate him. Admitting to feeling overwhelmed, he said he was still coming to terms with what it really meant. ‘I’m just really happy and grateful to the people that went to the trouble of nominating me’, he said. ‘I’m wondering what the people who aren’t here any more – my parents and brother and the people I grew up with – would have thought. I would loved to have shared it with them.’

Geoff said his wife Rhonda was also feeling overwhelmed. ‘She’s the one who really deserves it’, said Geoff, ‘allowing me to stay in the workshop working on things that take years to finish, and keeping things going’.

Geoff’s work has been featured in several issues of Australian Wood Review. His Australiana cabinet was pictured on the cover of issue No.4 in 1993. This sublime piece of work now resides with a private collector in Belgium. Other notable pieces by Geoff in public collections include the Yarralumla cabinet in Government House, Canberra.

The Hannah cabinet (above), dedicated to his family, may now be seen at the Lismore Regional Art Gallery, as well as the recently installed Chinoiserie cabinet shown below.

Geoff continues to teach regular woodworking classes from his Lismore workshop while working on a new cabinet inspired by Roman Italian architecture will be exhibited in Lismore in 2019.

Linda Nathan, Wood Review editor

Read about the making of the Hannah cabinet.
Learn more about Geoff Hannah, OAM at www.hannahcabinet.com