Our journey began with a ceramic artist named Ruby Neevay who worked as a ceramic decorator in the pottery factories at Brisbane, Wunderlich and Subiaco in Western Australia working on a range of Wembley Ware figurines in 1940 when she was 15 years of age. Ruby stayed in her job working forty five years at the pottery until she retired at the age of 60.

 

During that time, Ruby began to learn floral decorating and colouring effects through a German lady at the factory, these flowers were handmade and added to some of the Wembley Ware cast pieces. At that time Ruby's uncle pasted away and she asked the management if she could make a ceramic cross with roses, the cross was made and the management at the factory approached local monumental masons to see whether a market existed as an extension of Wembley Ware.

 

Over the next 35 years Ruby made thousands of floral ceramic tributes for cemeteries and grave sites. As Ruby approached retirement, new management at the factory did not want to continue with the floral tributes so she embarked on a plan to continue making ceramic flowers and to call her venture Ruby's Roses and was still enthusiastically making the floral tributes up to two days before she passed away in August 2012.

 

Today her legacy lives on and a new generation of artist, Jenny Mullineux with over 25 years experience as a ceramist and designer continues to produce this beautiful range of handcrafted ceramic floral tributes for people whose loved ones are to be cherished and remembered forever.