Samuel Hurst Seager

In 1928, after many years of donating works to Canterbury College and the Canterbury Public Library, Samuel Hurst Seager gifted an extensive library to Canterbury College’s School of Art. These works, noted in the catalogue below, appear with the bookplate that reads. "From the Library of S. Hurst Seager, C.B.E. "F.R.I.B.A, Past President N.Z.I.A. Member of Board of Governors 1910-1919. Presented to Canterbury College 1928". This collection is now housed in the University of Canterbury Library.

Samuel Hurst Seager was born in London in 1858, and came to Lyttelton with his parents in 1870. His father Samuel Seager was a master builder. S.H. Seager studied at Canterbury University College, and worked in the offices of Benjamin Mountfort. In 1882 he returned to England and studied at London University College, the Royal Academy, and at the Architectural Association, where he passed his examinations as an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects. By 1884 Seager had returned to New Zealand and established his architectural practice. Samuel Hurst Seager is well remembered as an influential teacher, having joined the staff of Canterbury College School of Art as a lecturer in Architecture and Decorative Design from 1893 to 1903. Over the course of his long career, Samuel Hurst Seager was to develop close links to Canterbury College. He was not only a graduate of the College, but was also a staff member and later served on the Board of Governors. His extensive design skills and knowledge of planning meant that Seager was to have a significant impact on the architectural development of the College town site. - Learning by Design: Building Canterbury College in the City 1873-1973. https://www.canterbury.ac.nz/exhibition/canterburycollege/perspective/seager.shtml

In 1928, along with the books which are now part of the University of Canterbury Library collection. Samuel Hurst Seager also gifted some 4000 lantern slides  to Canterbury College’s School of Art. Slides from this collection are highlighted on Illumination & Commemoration which is an open-access repository for the digitised lantern slides of New Zealand’s First World War battlefield memorials. These slides are part of the larger lantern slide collection now held by the Department of Art History and Theory at the University of Canterbury.

View the catalogue in the reader below or click here for a searchable pdf.

Further resources

Ian J. Lochhead. 'Seager, Samuel Hurst', Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, first published in 1996, updated May, 2002. Te Ara - the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/3s8/seager-samuel-hurst (accessed 18 August 2022)

Illumination & Commemoration. http://seagerlanternslides.nz/shseager (accessed 18 August 2022)