Shirley de Vocht (nee Martin) was an Aboriginal industrial designer based in Sydney who had a long and illustrious career as a post-WWII Australian textile and ceramic designer.

Shirley created the official towel for the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games and worked in a number of design and manufacturing industries. During her career, Shirley focused on Australian flora and later fauna, creating colourful, intricate designs.

The Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences has a extensive collection of Shirley’s work from 1945-1955 that includes 13 textile designs using poster paint (gouache). The works feature waratahs, wattle, flannel flowers, gum blossoms, Christmas bells, kangaroo paws and daisies.

From 1944 to 1946, Shirley was a young art student attending classes on Fridays and evenings at East Sydney Technical College. During this same period she embarked on one of her very first jobs. She took on the technically challenging role of translating Australian artist Russell Drysdale’s paintings and drawings into multi-coloured designs for screenprinted furnishing fabrics. At the time, she was just 17 and working in the Design Department of Silk and Textile Printers (STP) in Darlinghurst. From 1947 to 1949, Shirley worked as a ceramic designer with Modern Ceramic Products in Redfern, and as a textile designer at Tennyson Textile Mills in Gladesville.

From 1950 to 1951, she worked at Coverings & Co in Mascot, where she produced complex multi-layered designs for jacquard weave furnishing fabrics, including the ‘Roses’ and ‘Poppies’ designs. During this time she married John de Vocht, a photographer with the Dutch Air Force. Throughout her career, she always sought more technically challenging projects and produced many marketable product designs, some incorporating Aboriginal motifs and symbols. Her work was selected for international exhibition and for inclusion in numerous competitions. Shirley de Vocht continued to work as an artist after the 1960s, painting flora and fauna, including endangered species such as the native cat, the quoll and the snowy numbat, onto mass-produced ceramic plates. Shirley passed away in 2003.