Sculptor and modeller, daughter of Dr Leigh Cook of Claremont was born in Perth and studied at Perth and Fremantle Technical Schools over a number of years. She took both art and domestic subjects. Cook had not been able to enroll full-time because of duties in the family home. Cook, as the eldest daughter, was required to look after her delicate mother and younger sisters and could only attend intermittently between 1924 and 1928. She took classes in dress cutting and design, passing with credit, as well as art classes in life-drawing, light and shade (passing with credit) and landscape.
Cook earned her living as a commercial artist, primarily as an illustrator, drawing advertisements for the jewellers Levinsons and Caris Bros and for Foy & Gibson department store. She also painted white furniture and wooden objects with wildflowers for the tourist industry and designed and screened curtain fabric. Cook became head of the women’s section of the Art Department at Ajax Plaster Co., before marrying the sculptor Edward Kohler who, after returning from Europe, became the head modeller at Ajax.
After her marriage she made small clay models and figurines (in collaboration with her husband) as samples for Brisbane and Wunderlich. In 1950 Cook had two kilns built by her brother at her home in Gosnells and produced 'Kohlerware’. An example of Kohlerware was her angel vase.
- Writers:
- Dr Dorothy Erickson
- Date written:
- 2010
- Last updated:
- 2011
