Age 97, Inducted into the Order of Australia for 'Service to the craft of tatting as a designer and through the international publication of her patterns.'
Here's a link to Judith Connor's short bio of Norma at Craftree:
https://www.craftree.com/wiki/Benporath,+Norma
There is a table runner tatted by Norma and two scrapbooks of her published articles on display at the Museum of Applied Arts & Sciences (Castle Hill(a suburb of Sydney)):
https://collection.maas.museum/object/319288
The first two "Home Beautiful" collections of Norma's articles had very similar covers - the first had the round tablecloth on the cover that launched her designing career, and the second had a square tablecloth.
The Semco Shuttle came in pastel pink, blue or green
Dimensions: 7cm x 1.5cm (2.5 ins x 5/8in)
Photo courtesy of Deborah Zinn
Spools of SEMCO thread during WWII came with this warning label!
NORMA BENPORATH
Oct. 2, 1900 - July 2, 1998
Norma Benporath(pronounced benPORath) published over 1,000 tatted lace designs between the years 1929 and 1952. No other tatting designer in the world can make that claim. The list of these newspapers and periodicals are below the book bibliography, and were published primarily in Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa with a few showing up in UK and USA publications. Despite her prolific output, her designs have become scarce and hard to find.
Norma was born October 2, 1900 in Hawera, New Zealand, to Maude Catherine(née Datson) and Arthur Norman Laurence Benporath(1868 - Sept. 30, 1933), noted archeologist. Her mother was the daughter of Capt. James Datson, a manager of the Wallaroo Copper Mines in South Australia. Norma had one younger brother, Morley George(born 1904). Norma was born with impaired sight, but cataract surgery restored 50% vision to one eye. It was enough to allow Norma to become an avid reader. Her family moved to Melbourne in 1909 upon her father's retirement from his first career as an accountant and company auditor. Norma was inspired to learn to tat watching an aunt doing it one holiday and being told that tatting did not require as much sharp vision as embroidery. Norma worked out her own method for creating the knot and went quickly from tatting every pattern she could find, to designing her own using a tortoise shell shuttle her father made for her. Norma was proud of how much thread her handmade shuttle could hold. Norma began writing about tatting in 1929 at the age of 28. Her mother Maude encouraged her daughter's ambitions and even mounted much of the tatted lace to embroidered linen for Norma throughout her career to spare her daughter's eyes the strain, and probably contributed strongly to Norma's ability to produce so many designs in so short a time. This marriage of tatting and linen is a hallmark of Norma's and is prevalent through much of her work.
Throughout the start of Norma's designing career, threads suitable for tatting were hard to come by, and mating it with linen helped stretch the supply. This early frugality never left her work, even after supply became less limited, and has given us a legacy of tatted lace designs that is unique as it is beautiful. Norma did many all-tatted lace designs as well, but the combination of lace and embroidered linen turned what was beautiful separately exquisitely sublime together. It was genius, and had that impact on everyone who saw it. Norma's designs were noticed, and it was a tea cloth that got borrowed by a friend for a party that ultimately launched Norma's publishing career. The editor of "The Home Beautiful" saw the tea cloth and sought Norma out to ask her to write up the instructions for the magazine. Norma became a regular contributor and it opened the doors to many other publishing opportunities. The tea cloth that launched this amazing career is on the front cover of "The Home Beautiful Tatting Book," the first compilation of articles published because of the high demand for reprints of the original magazine articles. "The New Idea" weekly also sold two collections of Norma's designs to an avid readership. Her sudden popularity with these readerships created a demand for even more designs in newspapers and weeklies.
When SEMCO, a thread manufacturer, noticed a rise in fine crochet thread sales, they realized they had an untapped market to explore, and Norma did collections of tatting patterns for SEMCO that were used to help promote their threads. Norma also worked with SEMCO to produce a line of thread and shuttle specifically suited to tatting. A picture of one of the shuttles can be seen in the left column. Between her articles that began in "The Australian Home Beautiful," many newspaper columns, and SEMCO tatting pattern collections, Norma became the face of tatting in a large part of the world. The capstone on Norma's publishing career was her book, "Every Woman's Complete Guide to Tatting, Illustrated: A Book of Fine Things to Make", appearing in harcover June 1952.
Norma had been invited to write a tatting book by a London publisher in 1946 and was offered international distribution - family responsibilities prevented her accepting this invitation, but they were still so strongly enthusiastic about the proposed project that they arranged to have the book published in Melbourne instead so that Norma would remain in charge of its creation. Norma's mother was so excited about this capstone in her daughter's publishing career that she came up with her own idea for the cover, which Norma kept as a keepsake but ultimately didn't use.
Norma instead had her book bound in blue linen cloth with silver printing on the spine, chosen to commemorate a beloved birthday gift received at the age of seven. This was when she first realized the ambition of publishing her own book one day, and the memory of the gift and her budding ambition stuck with her. On the dust jacket is a Richelieu embroidered satin dressing-table set with a deep silk tatting border. The instructions for the mat are in the book.
Norma never married, and lived with her mother in Queensland until her mother's passing April 27, 1958. We don't know why Norma stopped after the publication of her book - she went on to live 46 more years. But it may be that her mother's failing health was a factor, when Maude had been a partner in her daughter's career from the start. Norma's brother George did marry and had four children.
Norma was awarded an honorary life membership of the New South Wales branch of the Australian Tatters' Guild in 1997, and inducted into the Order of Australia for service to the craft of tatting as a designer and through the international publication of her patterns, before her passing in 1998.
I wish to thank Judith Connors, without whose help this page would not have been possible. She had the presence of mind to compile a comprehensive list of all the newspapers and magazines where Norma Benporath published her patterns before Norma passed away in 1998. I'm deeply grateful Judith shared the list with us so I could begin this page - I would never have been able to recover all of this information on my own. It is a long list, and we may never complete filling in all the designs Norma published between 1929 and 1952 - as there are more than a thousand. She also provided the photos and some of the biographic information offered here. This page would not have been possible without her gracious help. Thank you, Thank you, Thank you, from the bottom of my heart. - Leigh
