In the second half of the 1940s, Juliet Peter became more widely known as an illustrator through her role for the Department of Education’s School Publications branch and commissions by the New Zealand Listener. As this series of black and white sketches indicate, her interest in rural life informed the texts she chose to illustrate. A 1948 profile of the artist reported that her work often included field trips: “Miss Peter does not do all her drawings in the office. Last week she went out stalking a milkman and his horse to get sketches for a story […] another day she walked through half a mile of sticky mud to make drawings inside a wool-shed for the shearing chapter in Te Awa Awa.”

He Kapuka Oneone – A Handful of Soil (from August 2024)