Burke, Frances (1907 - 1994)

Career Highlights

Began printing with Morris Holloway, a fellow Melbourne Technical College graduate; registered business established as Burway Prints, 1937. Left the George Bell school to pursue career as a designer/business woman, 1938. Burway Prints became Frances Burke Fabrics, 1942 (Holloway left and established Textile Converters). Designed fabric for the first Australian Embassy in Washington, 1942. Founding member of the Society of Designers for Industry (now Design Institute of Australia) with Grant Featherston, Frederick Ward, R. Haughton James and Selwyn Coffey, 1947. Opened retail outlet Good Design, later known as New Design, in Hardware Street, Melbourne, 1948. Founding member of Industrial Design Institute of Australia (now DIA), 1958. Member of the Council of the Museum of Modern Art and Design, 1958-1966. Awarded MBE for services to design, 1970. Invited to State Government reception for Women Firsts as a 'Pioneer in contemporary design', in International Women's Year, 1975. Honorary Doctorate of Arts conferred at Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, 1987, in recognition of Burke's seminal and continuing influence on design in Australia.

Burke created strongly-patterned modern designs which had a distinctly Australian spirit. Commissions included many hospitals, Melbourne and Monash Universities, Melbourne; Yarralumla, Canberra; embassies in Washington, Paris; the State Library of Victoria; and the Civic Theatre, Canberra.

Burke promoted the use of innovative exciting designs and vivid daring colours. She also strove to educate her clientele in the use of appropriate fabrics to create an ambience for the new wave of architecture and design flowing from such practitioners as Roy Grounds, Frederick Romberg, Robin Boyd, Grant Featherston and Marion Hall Best.

Burke believed colour was a living joyous thing and drew much of her inspiration from the natural land and sea scapes surrounding her weekend house at Anglesea, Victoria. Her shop New Design presented a range of plain dyed cotton fabrics for clothing, and also presented fifty of her more popular prints as a repeat range which buyers could select in any of fifty-two colours. This range included prints inspired by native flora and fauna, and based on Aboriginal, tropical, historical and musical motifs. Her designs and colours were regularly featured in fashionable home and interior design magazines of the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. She also wrote articles for such publications.

Burke acted as Chairman of the Course Advisory Committee for textile design in the Faculty of Art, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology. Throughout her career she was a powerful voice in support of younger artists.

Represented: Frances Burke Textile Textile Resource Collection, RMIT University; National Gallery of Australia, A.C.T.; Powerhouse Museum, Sydney; National Galley of Victoria; Historic Houses Trust, Sydney.