Lucie (Lulu) Shorter (1904)
Lucie (Lulu) Shorter (1904) was an Australian designer best known for her product designs, including the first commercially successful Australian designs for Royal Doulton. Her works are now held at the National Gallery of Australia, the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences (Powerhouse Museum) and the State Library of New South Wales.
Lucie Emilie (Lulu) Shorter (1904) enrolled at Â鶹ÊÓƵ School in 1898 at the age of 11. Years later her younger sisters Dorothy Moxham (Shorter, 1913) and Elaine Shorter (1921) also attended the School. At the 1904 Speech Night, Lulu won the School Conduct Award.
After leaving Â鶹ÊÓƵ School, Lulu studied art at Granville Technical School, and later at the East Sydney Technical College, which provided her with a knowledge of drawing and design. She achieved high marks and prizes throughout her courses. One of her 1906-07 pen-and-ink designs for a plate border featuring flannel flowers was published in the international magazine Keramic Decoration.
While in England with her father, who was the Australasian agent for the British ceramics firm Doulton & Co, Lucie showed her designs based on Australian motifs to the manager of the Doulton factory at Burslem. Impressed, he selected them for a series of tableware in both earthenware and bone china. These patterns, known as the ‘Lulu Series’, consisted of a border of naturalistic entwined swirling flannel flowers. Other flowers used in Lulu's designs and produced by Doulton included the Glossodia orchid, native rose and native fuschia. Her designs for Doulton were described as exceptional and significant.
One of Lucie’s best-known transfer-printed and painted designs was a stylised waratah, which appeared in 1912 on Doulton tea services and toilet sets; this pattern was also available in a flambé red glaze. Her Waratah cup and saucer was part of Royal Doulton’s first commercially successful Australian design and was used by the writer Miles Franklin who reportedly gave her guests turns to use it. (Miles Franklin’s Waratah Cup is held alongside her publication The Book of the Waratah Cup as part of the collection of the State Library of New South Wales.)
Lulu's work is also held in the National Gallery of Australia, and includes examples from the full waratah dinner set, in addition to numerous drawings including her pen-and-ink design for the flannel flower plate border. The Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences (Powerhouse Museum), which also holds her father’s large Doulton ceramics collection, has many of Lulu's pieces in its collection.