Textile samples: Great Barrier Reef c.1956

Textile designer and fashion entrepreneur Olive Ashworth was born in Brisbane and studied at Somerville House. When Ashworth’s father died, she moved to Melbourne with her mother, who encouraged her to enrol in a commercial art course at the Art Training Institute. She began the course in 1933 and completed it via correspondence after returning to Brisbane. Ashworth subsequently managed the advertising department for the travel and food company Burns, Philp & Co. and, in 1945, launched Olive Ashworth Publicity Services, designing brochures for Queensland’s burgeoning tourist industry, which focused on Surfers Paradise and the Great Barrier Reef.

While Ashworth had visited Lindeman Island in 1939, it was her trip to Heron Island in the early 1950s that determined her subsequent career trajectory. Engaged to produce a brochure for the resort, Ashworth began making drawings of the underwater world she encountered, which she then converted into repeat-pattern textile designs. This design was commissioned by Stoddarts Fabrics Australia Ltd on behalf of a Swedish textile mill. The fabric is one of the thirteen colourways produced, with the pattern proving popular in Europe and being sold worldwide.