Serving tray with hand-painted decoration by artist 1921

This wooden serving tray is painted with fanciful exotic birds, luxurious roses, peonies, and trumpet vines against an inky black background, with a rich golden decorative border. It is one of many that Pemberton hand-painted and lacquered from about 1920 on, using her own designs inspired by Flemish and Dutch painters, especially Geertje Pieters (1636–1712) and Jan van Kessel the Elder (1626–1679). Each tray was unique and meticulously planned. Notations and pencil drawings in sketchbooks and her diary reveal the close observation they required and the detail of each element in the designs. She took some of the individual flowers and insects from specific paintings by these artists, revealing her own studies in museums and books.

Drawn by her love of flowers, Pemberton found solace in painting them. While in Victoria in 1895 and in 1902, she created a watercolour series of precise botanical illustrations of wild and cultivated flowers. She placed them alongside lines of poetry that she rendered in calligraphy and gifted many in folios to her siblings. In 1917, following a series of family tragedies and a serious accident, she again found that painting small things rather than her usual large canvases appealed. Encouraged by her neighbour Victoria Sackville-West, Pemberton began to explore domestic décor. She settled on fanciful compositions, clearly separating them from these earlier botanical illustrations or her portraits and landscapes.

Pemberton hand-painted and lacquered many different objects—inkstands, bookends, tea caddies, and pieces of furniture such as screens, writing desks, and chairs. The trays proved to be most popular: she received many commissions and donated others to charity. Despite increasing infirmities, she continued painting them into her eighties. They represented not just an alternative artistic outlet but a modest yet steady income. A 1946 photograph captures her painting a tray, with a selection of completed trays behind her.