We had a visit from Joan Josling, who was visiting Te Toi Uku Museum with the U3A Birkenhead group. She asked if we had the winning entry from the 1959 Crown Lynn Design Awards, as she couldn’t see it on display – she could see the second place design ‘Narvik’ designed by Don Mills.

It turns out that her husband Otway Josling had designed the winning entry – ‘Reflections’ a pattern with stylised fern leaves. And as she spoke to me, Joan pulled a plate (complete with bracket) from her bag to show me, along with a bunch of newspaper clippings from 1959. “This is usually on the wall” she said, “I remember flying up to Auckland to the awards and meeting Tom Clark. Otway and I were about to get married, so we bought a lounge suite with the prize money.”