Lily Daff

Watercolour illustration of takahē by Lily Attey Daff

Kea, The Avicultural magazine 1932

Daff was born in Upton, London, on 16 March 1885.[1] She took courses in drawing and painting at the London Polytechnic but was also known to have completed at least one course at King Edward Technical College in Dunedin.[2][3] After her polytechnic training, Daff worked as an illustrator for Christmas card producer Raphael Tuck and Sons.[4] Daff arrived in Otago in 1926 and obtained work with the Government Publicity Department.

Daff was the Officer in Charge of Exhibitions at Otago Museum, painting dioramas, reorganising and decorating the galleries, designing displays, posters, and producing guide-books. Daff was on staff at the museum for 12 years in total. Her obituary claims her chief contribution to scientific education was in the travelling cases which circulated throughout the museums of New Zealand, however now she is mostly known for her illustrations of New Zealand birds.[2] Daff's line illustrations were considered by the Otago Daily Times to turn the newly published guide Introducing the Otago Museum into a "minor collector's item".[5]

In June 1932 Daff left Dunedin for Wellington, to fulfill a commission for the New Zealand Bird Protection Society to paint a series of pictures of New Zealand native birds.[6] Daff illustrated Walter Oliver's book on New Zealand birds and Pérrine Moncrieff's New Zealand Birds and How to Identify Them.[2] Her copies of drawings by J W Barnicoat are in the Hocken Collections, as are a painting of a takahe and other unfinished natural history studies. Daff also supplied hundreds of line drawings to illustrate research publications on ethnography, many of which can be seen online in the Journal of the Polynesian Society.[2] The paintings Daff completed for the New Zealand Bird Protection Society have been published in books and as journal covers many times, and the original paintings are now in the Alexander Turnbull Library.[4]

Lily Attey Daff died on 3 May 1945.[7] Her middle name, commonly spelled Atty, shows as Attey on her birth certificate.[8]

• Daff, Lily Attey, (1933) New Zealand birds: Twenty-four coloured illustrations of forest-inhabiting birds with descriptive letterpress. Wellington: New Zealand Native Bird Protection Society.
• Daff, Lily Attey, and Falla, Robert Alexander, (1940) New Zealand birds : twenty-four coloured illustrations of birds of coast and ocean with descriptive letterpress. Wellington: Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand
• Burton, Olga Pauline and Daff, Lily Attey, (1943) Stories of bird and bush. (with ) Auckland: Oswald-Sealy (New Zealand)
• Daff, Lily Attey, (1944) Introducing some of the more interesting exhibits in the Otago Museum. Dunedin: Otago Museum.
• Falla, Robert Alexander, and Daff, Lily Attey, (1953) New Zealand sea and shore birds. Wellington Royal Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand.
• Daff, Lily Attey, and Ellis, Brian Ashlyn, (1974) An album of New Zealand birds. Wellington: Forest and Bird Protection Society of New Zealand.
• Easther, Elisabeth (ed.), Daff, Lily Attey (ill.), (2017) Bird words: New Zealand writers on birds. Auckland: Penguin Random House New Zealand (2017).

• Blackman, Margery (2000) "Forest and Bird illustrator remembered: Remembers the artist who did paintings of native birds and plants for the society." Wellington: Forest and Bird.
• 3 Dunedin designers: Lily Daff, Rona Dyer, Eileen Mayo. Catalogue of an exhibition at the Hocken Library Gallery, 9 August - 25 September 1999. Dunedin: Hocken Library.