Elsa Linton Tyler was born in Auckland, New Zealand, in 1910, the second daughter of Australians Harold Cecil Tyler and Mildred Isabel née Pringle, who lived in the suburbs of Ponsonby and Devonport while Elsa’s father, an executive with the Singer Sewing Machine’s Australasian branch, was working in the company’s New Zealand office. Elsa Tyler was also a cousin, by marriage, of designer and architect Frederick 'Deric’ Deane.
The Tyler family returned to Australia in 1912 and settled in Sydney, where Elsa Tyler later attended East Sydney Technical College. While there, she contributed hand lettering to the 1931 monograph on The work of Eileen McGrath, edited by G. Rayner Hoff.
Following the sudden death of her father during a business trip to Adelaide in 1935, Elsa and her mother moved to Hartwell, in Melbourne, where Elsa’s older sister, Dorothy McCutcheon, was living. Elsa began working at the Methodist Ladies’ College, Kew, where she taught art and craft and helped to organise the school’s annual students’ exhibition.
In 1949 Tyler left Melbourne for England, where she undertook courses in craft teaching; specialising in fabric printing; and bookbinding at London’s Central School of Art, as well as undertaking a tour of Europe’s art museums.
- Writers:
-
Eric Riddler
- Date written:
- 2012
- Last updated:
- 2013
