Lady behind the Golden Paw Platypus
By Linda Vergnani

Squirrel gliders, fairy penguins and goannas inhabit the home of Lady Jean Griffin at Mittagong in the Southern Highlands.

They are not the live variety but bronze statues made by the 84-year old sculptress who crafted the platypus for the Golden Paw Award perpetual trophy. It is awarded each year by the Foundation for National Parks & Wildlife on September 7, National Threatened Species Day.

Lady Griffin with Squirrel Glider Photograph © Linda Vergnani

Thousands of children from across New South Wales competed for the prize in the first competition in 2002. When the main prizewinner Alexander Brooks of Urana came up to collect his trophy from Lady Griffin he seemed staggered by the weight of what he had won.

Sitting in the garden of her country home, Lady Griffin recalls: "He was delighted at the trophy." She believes many trophies are not appealing to pupils at all. "Half the time they give them awful things, don’t they? The animals I sculpt are made for children. They've all got to be happy."

So the platypus on the perpetual trophy had a beaming bill and each of the animals she sculpts in clay has a happy expression. She says she often gives the smiling sculptures away to her grandchildren.

Wife of former Sydney Lord Mayor Sir David Griffin, CBE, Lady Griffin's work is in private and commercial collections in Australia and Switzerland. Her husband, a former director of companies, is known for two books linked to his imprisonment in the notorious Japanese Changi prison in World War Two. The first is his children's book The Happiness Box, which he wrote after being captured in the fall of Singapore in 1942. Illustrated by another prisoner Leslie Greener, the book about Winston the chi-chak lizard and other characters was intended as a gift for the children in Changi. However the Japanese military concluded that Sgt Griffin's book contained secret coded messages and ordered it destroyed. The Australians managed to hide the manuscript by burying it in a box underground. It was dug up and published after the war.

Last year Sir David published Changi Days – The Prisoner as Poet – a collection of poems written by members of the Changi Literary Society which he formed.

Although her husband was imprisoned shortly after they were married, Lady Griffin shrugs off the hardship. She says she was among thousands of other women separated from their husbands in the war.

Lady Griffin still sculpts whenever possible and is showing several of her works at the Sculptors Society exhibition in Darling Park Gallery (on until September 6). They include a swooping squirrel glider that can swivel freely on its wooden stand and a sleek fairy penguin swimming off a rock.

It is not just animals, birds and reptiles that she sculpts but cheetahs, baboons and other beasts whose pictures she sees in books. In her studio she shows an eclectic range of subjects – from three children doing headstands to a realistic squashed winter hat. Many of her ideas come from photographs.

Trained at Randwick Technical College, the East Sydney College and the Workshop Art Centre in Willoughby, Lady Griffin used to make unusual sculptures of insects and wildlife in knotted wool on metal frames. She has also worked in stone and wood. The platypus on the trophy was carved out of clay and then cast in bronze.

As she walks around her studio, Lady Griffin strokes her statues. "This one has a lovely patina, doesn't it?" she asks touching a gleaming mermaid. And then stroking the squirrel glider she says: "I really love my animals."

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