Design and Art Australia Online

Embroiderer and weaver Norma Rolland was born in Western Australia the daughter of Robert Anthony Rolland, civil engineer and surveyor, and Norma Gertrude n_e Pearce. They lived on the corner of Ord and Walker Street in West Perth. Rolland was educated at Miss Dalziell’s Girls Grammar and Presbyterian Ladies’ College from 1912-23.

In her circle ladies did not work so after school she joined the social roufnd of tennis parties, reading, and so on, helping run the large property. Rolland studied art with Bea Darbyshire at Henri Van Raalte’s school in Ventnor Avenue and used to help Bea with her prints, which she printed in the laundry. In 1925 Rolland enrolled in Needlework at Perth Technical School under Loui Benham where she obtained a credit pass.

In 1926 her father became very ill and needed caring for even though they had a servant so she studied privately with Benham who lived nearby. In 1931, when her father died, Rolland went east for ten months to stay with relatives in Geelong and Sydney. She travelled with her mother in Europe in 1935-36 and studied at the Royal College of Needlework in London.

When war broke out she joined the VAD. Rolland tried to enlist in the navy but instead was eventually selected for cypher work and worked in Fremantle for eighteen months until just before Singapore fell, after which Women’s Royal Australian Naval Service arrived from the east to take over. In 1945 when the end of war was in sight she went to Sydney and continued working in cypher until 1946. Visiting her friend Margaret Richmond, who was teaching weaving at Frensham school in Mittagong, she became interested and studied, dyeing, weaving and materials-preparation in Sydney for a few months.

In 1946 Rolland was discharged from the civil service when the cypher work was over. She returned to Western Australia via Melbourne where she had further instruction in weaving. Rolland brought a thirty-six inch loom with her and woollen yarns and set up a studio where she wove tweeds, lampshades, bright-coloured woollen knee-rugs, vividly coloured linen tablemats, guest towels at various fabric lengths. She spun as well. Weaving was a fashionable studio practice for women, particularly during the forties, fifties and sixties. Cotton and linen were available in Western Australia.

Between 1947 and 1953 Rolland exhibited in the King Edward Hotel with a number of weavers who worked in the ambit of interior designer, Maria Dent. Others included Astrid Colebatch, who had learnt in Sweden on a visit home to her family, Mrs Robinson who lived in Austen Street, Subiaco, Western Australia and wove rag rugs during the war and sold through a craft shop in London Court, Miss Blythe, and Dulcie Lamb. Rolland usually made for a year and then sold it at the exhibition. There were occasional orders. Her output included bright coloured wool knee-rugs (red and purple), linen tablemats in bright colours – particularly yellow, guest towels and lengths of tweed. These annual exhibitions provided enough work from commissions for year-round employment. However with an ill mother there was not the time to make the enterprise support her financially and so in 1954 Rolland joined the Red Cross where she taught weaving until 1966.

Writers:

Dr Dorothy Erickson

Date written:

2010

Last updated:

2011