Betty Joan Smith = Jean King

In her own words, Australian Porcelain Decorator, No. 8, June 1983

“I was born in Sussex, England, more years ago than I care to remember.

My Father thought I had a talent for art and when I was eight years old he arranged for me to have drawing and painting lessons from a local artist. At twelve years old I started evening classes at the Hastings School of Art and continued there for about ten years, studying design in many aspects. During my later teens and early twenties I worked in my father’s photographic studio, mainly retouching negatives and colouring prints.

It was during this time I met my husband [he was a bandsman with the Second Battalion of The Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, and they were playing in Hastings. My Mother was engaged to someone else at the time, a Scotsman, Stuart ?, in the first Battalion of The Cameron Highlanders] and one week before the outbreak of the Second World War we were married. In 1948 and four children later we came to Australia. After nine months in Victoria we moved to Tasmania. With the doubling of our family over the years, I found no time at all for art in any form. [Wrong! She sewed and knitted lovely clothes for us, and for our dolls, and made birthday cakes, beautifully iced and decorated.] They were, however, happy as well as busy years living in the country at Snug some twenty miles from Hobart. Then came the 1967 bush fires, we lost everything and eventually moved to Hobart. As the children grew up and were married and off my hands, I took up leather work. I went to an Adult Education class for a year and taught a class there myself for the next two years.

Some where along the line my husband heard Jan Kelly talking on the radio about china painting. He felt sure that this was my kind of thing and persuaded me to ring Jan and I found myself back under the aegis of Adult Education being taught china painting. In the beginning, I struggled to find the technique and found copying other people’s designs irksome. Then a one-day demonstration by Fay Good pointed to all kinds of exciting possibilities. So after eighteen months of very sound instruction, particularly in technique, by Jan, I decided to go it alone.

That was four years ago and I have since enjoyed myself thoroughly and won several Royal Show prizes along the way. I do all my own drawing, mostly from flowers in my garden, and whilst I may be influenced on occasion by older pieces the design is always my own and unique."

In 1929 the family moved to Thornyridge, in Westfield. According to one of my Mother's cousins, they had lived there for about a year (and my Grandfather had apparently done some alterations - Bungalow, at Thorny Ridge, Westfield / Smith DR/A/2/2/4/29 Apr 1929) a man driving by stopped and knocked and made an offer my Grandfather couldn't refuse. My Mother told me that the year at Thornyridge was the happiest of her childhood. Maybe 'Lyndale' seemed a link to that time.