Mary Packer Harris

Mary Packer Harris D.A. (Edin.) (30 July 1891 – 26 August 1978) was a Scottish artist and art teacher with a considerable career in South Australia.

Mary was born in Middlesbrough, Yorkshire the only daughter of musician and beekeeper Clement Antrobus Harris (c. 1862 – 12 February 1942) and his wife Mary Elizabeth Harris ( – 14 February 1937). She grew up in Scotland where she graduated with a diploma from the Edinburgh College of Art. in 1913 and did a post-graduate course in woodblock printing with F. Morley Fletcher, director of the College. She trained as a teacher with the Scottish Education Department and taught at Buckie, Banffshire, Scotland, then from 1918 at the Ayr Academy. An elder brother, Antrobus, was killed in the Flanders trenches in 1916. Another brother, John Brocas Harris ( –1967) had earlier emigrated to South Australia, served at Gallipoli with the Army Medical Corps and was badly wounded. He married Gwendoline Mary Colyer ( –1959) in 1917, and settled in Gawler, where he was a noted horticulturist.

In response to his urging, Mary and her parents emigrated in 1921. In 1922 she accepted a position with the SA School of Arts and Crafts, where she was to teach for 30 years in a wide range of mediums: oil and watercolor, lino and woodblock printing, tapestry and embroidery. She was a longtime member of the Royal SA Society of Arts (1922-67) and also exhibited with the Contemporary Art Society. Fellow teachers included her friend Ruth Tuck. Students included Rex Wood, Jacqueline Hick and John Olday. She lived at "Bundilla", 116 Walkerville Terrace, Walkerville, which she filled with her own and her students' art, and with a lovingly tended native bird garden punctuated with sculptures by William Ricketts and her nephew Quintin Gilbert Harris (1928–1985), son of J. B. Harris (above). Her bequest of this home to the Town of Walkerville was declined, but the Council did accept the many works of art, including sculptures by her friend Ola Cohn.

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