Ceramics

Caroline Grayston (creator), George Grayston (framer, architect and husband) and Stephanie Grayston (daughter and artist)

Bright colourful painted tiles from sunny Western Australia

Inspired by traditional tile designs from Southern Europe with their bright colours and vigorous designs, Caroline Grayston encouraged her artist daughter Stephanie to create a series of paintings reflecting the ever-present light of Western Australia. These original designs by Stephanie were produced in their studio in the Darling Hills near Perth. Having successfully marketed a large range of designs throughout Australia, her husband George, an architect framed the works and they were sold commercially in the 1990s.

George and Caroline arrived in Perth from the United Kingdom late in 1969 with four small children. They had met in Bermuda and later in Montreal Canada where George was studying architecture at McGill University. They then got married, had children and settled down to working in London. They found life tough after World War 2 and sought the warmer weather again in Bermuda.

According to a profile piece in the Darlington Review one of George’s work colleagues was a West Australian and he suggested they try Perth out. On their first weekend in a borrowed car they found a six-bedroom house to buy in Darlington in the Perth hills which they immediately purchased.

They were quickly drawn into the hills artistic community becoming good friends with notable West Australian artists Guy Grey-Smith and Robert Juniper.

More than 50 years later, they are still immersed with George Patron of the popular Darlington Arts Festival.

The two works in the Fairview Collection of a teapot and a cockerel are particularly striking and capture the design aesthetic of the outdoor Western Australian lifestyle of the 1990s perfectly.

If their goal was the put a smile on the face of homeowners over a family meal in a Mediterranean climate, they have achieved this in a brilliant way.