The National Library looks to public for clues to Sunday School banner

By Linda Morris
Updated September 23 2014 - 2:08am, first published 1:50am
Curator Nat Williams with the Parramatta Sunday Schools 1815 banner at the National Library of Australia. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Curator Nat Williams with the Parramatta Sunday Schools 1815 banner at the National Library of Australia. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Curator Nat Williams with the Parramatta Sunday Schools 1815 banner at the National Library of Australia. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Curator Nat Williams with the Parramatta Sunday Schools 1815 banner at the National Library of Australia. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Curator Nat Williams with the Parramatta Sunday Schools 1815 banner at the National Library of Australia. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Curator Nat Williams with the Parramatta Sunday Schools 1815 banner at the National Library of Australia. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Curator Nat Williams with the Parramatta Sunday Schools 1815 banner at the National Library of Australia. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen
Curator Nat Williams with the Parramatta Sunday Schools 1815 banner at the National Library of Australia. Photo: Alex Ellinghausen

It measures the size of a small tablecloth. The delicate needlework, tassel fringe, bronze-coloured ribbons and painted symbol of a flying dove and embroidered entwined olive branches hint at its Christian origins and its early colonial provenance, and it carries the date 1815.