Shirley de Vocht (nee Martin)'s small personal archive documents and provides insight into how one young Australian woman found a path into working as a designer in a range of post-WWII Australian design and manufacturing industries after studying art at East Sydney Technical College.
The leaflet, 'Australia's 100 Best Textile Designs for 1954/ an exhibition of selected entries for the Leroy-Alcorso Textile prize' lists all the entries in this textile design competition of 1954 including designs submitted by Shirley de Vocht. The 'Prouds Gift Book' shows a range of Shirley's ceramic designs for Modern Ceramic Products.
Shirley de Vocht's first job was as a textile designer with Silk and Textile Printers Pty Ltd (STP), Darlinghurst between 1944 and 1946, during which time the founder, Claudio Alcorso (1913-2000) was involved in Australia's war effort. She left Silk & Textile Printers to work as a ceramic designer with Modern Ceramic Products (MCP) in Redfern from 1947 to 1948. She returned to textile design when she joined Tennyson Textile Mills Pty Ltd, Gladesville (1949 - 1950), and later moved to Coverings & Co Pty Ltd, Mascot (1949 - 1951) and Dri-Glo Towels Pty Ltd, Five Dock (1951-1959).
At Dri-Glo she was responsible for designing the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games towel which later went into production without the Olympic motifs. For Dri-Glo Shirley also created Aboriginal towel designs, perhaps inspired by her own western-Sydney Aboriginal heritage, but maybe just a reflection of the popularity of Aboriginal motifs in Australian design during the 1950s.
During her career, Shirley simultaneously worked as a freelance artist-designer, creating textile designs of Australian flora including native heath, flannel flowers, wattle and other Australian flora. Several of these were forwarded to FW Grafton & Co Ltd in England in 1952, where one was purchased for production and another exhibited.
Shirley de Vocht entered local textile design competitions as well, including the Leroy-Alcorso design competition in 1954 where the 100 best entries received were exhibited. The winning textile, a design by Douglas Annand, is represented in the collection of the Powerhouse Museum.
In her retirement, Shirley de Vocht continued to work as an artist, painting endangered species such as the native cat, the quoll and the snowy numbat onto mass-produced blank ceramic plates.
Anne-Marie Van de Ven, Curator, 2002 (updated after Shirley de Vocht's family visited the Museum to view the archive on 14/11/2008).
Shirley de Vocht (nee Martin), textile and ceramic designer, b. Carlingford, Sydney 1929
Shirley de Vocht (then Martin) studied at East Sydney Technical College (ESTC) from 1944 to 1946 (2 evenings and one day ie Fridays) under Phyllis Shillito (1895-1980). Students usually stayed at ESTC for five years, however Phyllis Shillito, an English designer who had come to Australia from the Yorkshire Textile Centre and later started a private school at 60 Grosvenor Street, Sydney, helped Shirley get a position with STP (Silk and Textile Printers Pty Ltd) at 30-62 Barcom Ave, Darlinghurst in 1944 where Shirley then worked until 1946.
Claudio Alcorso (1913-2000), his brother Orlando and Paul Sonnino had established STP in 1939. STP is best known for having developed a milestone exhibition in the 1940s of Australian artist-designed Modernage Fabrics, a pioneering early attempt to link art to Australian ind The Rocks studio where they were often taken around The Rocks area to study and draw.
Shirley moved to Modern Ceramic Products (MCP), 107 Redfern Street, Redfern in 1947 where she worked till 1948 under MCP manager and co-founder, Mr. Impey.
She married John de Vocht, photographer, in 1948. John de Vocht was in the Dutch Air Force. He trained in England and was sent to Australia in lieu of being sent to the Dutch East Indies. Initially based at the Archerfield Aerodrome in Qld, he then moved to Bradfield Park, Sydney where he met Shirley de Vocht around 1945. He then went to the East Indies for two and a half years, continued to correspond with Shirley, and they married in 1948. Their daughter Nicole Leigh was born in 1962, her son Vaughan Willem in 1960. (Shirley's daughter Nicole (now Nicole Drake) also studied colour and design with Phyllis Shillito.)
Shirley worked as a textile designer at Tennyson Textile Mills Pty Ltd, Gladesville between 1949 and 1950 and at Coverings & Co Pty Ltd, 72 Gardners Road, Mascot between 1949 and 1951. During these years, Shirley also created freelance textile designs of Australian flora including native heath, flannel flowers, wattle and other Australian flora. Several of these were forwarded to FW Grafton & Co Ltd in England in 1952 and one was purchased for production while another was exhibited in England before it was returned.
In 1954, two of Shirley de Vocht's textile designs were selected for inclusion in the Leroy-Alcorso design competition in which the 100 best entries received were exhibited. (A textile design by Douglas Annand design won first prize.)
Between 1951 and 1959, Shirley worked as a designer with Dri-Glo Towels Pty Ltd, 213-253 Parramatta Road, Five Dock (Dri-Glo). In 1956 she designed an Olympic Games towel design among other towels, including a daffodil design and a complex merging colour design with vertical stripes.
Mrs de Vocht now hand paints endangered species such as the native cat, the quoll and the snowy numbat onto mass-produced blank ceramic plates.
Printed in Sydney
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