The perfect person for the task

In 1921 Charles resigned from his position as Conservator of Forests for Western Australia to undertake forest survey work in Papua and in New Guinea, and Ruth returned to Ireland. In 1925, Charles was appointed Commonwealth Forestry Adviser and they moved to Melbourne. Shortly after arriving, Ruth was commissioned to exhibit a model bedroom in the Arts and Crafts Society annual exhibition in Melbourne Town Hall, opened by the Prime Minister’s wife, Mrs Stanley Bruce. Her refined period style furniture made in Australian timbers, her sense of colour and her exquisite embroidery drew much praise. A journalist compared her design most favourably to another exhibit, a living room for a new settler’s home, made using kerosene tins, stringy bark and hessian.

The acclaim she received from the exhibition helped her make friends with the well- connected in Melbourne, and as a regular contributor to the magazines Table Talk and The Australian Home Builder (later The Australian Home Beautiful) she had a captive audience of homemakers.

On 29 March 1926, the Secretary of the Federal Capital Commission, C. S. Daley, wrote to Ruth to confirm her appointment as Furniture Specialist for the furnishing of the two official residences, Government House, Canberra and the Prime Minister’s house. Her remuneration was £3.3.0 for the days the work would take, plus travel expenses.

Cabinet approved a furnishing budget of £10,000 for the Governor-General’s residence and £5,000 for the Prime Minister’s residence. She had 14 months to get the job done.

‘As a rule in my work I am confronted with the finished house and am relieved if there are no family atrocities in the way of furniture that I have to accommodate. The windows, doors and mantelpieces I have, of course, to accept, and I regard myself as lucky if the electric lights are not already installed’.

Ruth Lane-Poole, The Australian Home Beautiful ‘A Home for a Governor-General’ by Ruth Lane-Poole, 2 May 1927, p13