July 09, 2026

Dr Sylvia Martin "Double Act: Eirene Mort & Nora Kate Weston"

36 minutes

In this latest episode of Biographers in Conversation, Dr Sylvia Martin chats with Dr Gabriella Kelly-Davies about Double Act: Eirene Mort and Nora Kate Weston.

Here’s what you’ll discover in this episode:

While Eirene Mort was a designer, black & white illustrator, watercolourist, etcher, tapestry worker and potter, Nora Kate Weston, whom Eirene named ‘Chips’, was a carpenter, woodcarver and metalworker. They lived and worked together for 60 years early in the 20th century.

Sylvia Martin crafted a dual biography because Nora had been consistently relegated to the shadows given the higher public profile of Eirene. Double Act is an act of biographical justice to bring Nora into equal focus with Eirene.

The Eirene Mort archive at the National Library of Australia is almost entirely visual. It includes over 20 sketchbooks, objects and artworks, though no letters between Eirene and Nora. Sylvia read their lives through images, travel sketches and lateral sources, including shipping lists and newspaper archives on Trove.

Influenced by her own experience of coming out as a lesbian in the 1980s and finding no narratives that fit, Sylvia has spent 35 years writing about women in same-sex relationships from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Double Act is Sylvia’s fifth book and contains more of herself than any previous work.

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By Gabriella