[1] The girls' father, Major Ottley Lane Perry, was a prominent cotton merchant and councillor who eventually served as justice of the peace for the County of Middlesex and the Borough of Bolton.
[3] While studying in London Perry created numerous wood engravings that are still held by the school today, including Mrs. Budgett,[4] Head of a Young Man,[5] and Christmas Card Farm Scene.
[6] Her most notable work from this period is a large, 52 x 39 cm (20.5 x 15 in) wood engraving print of a cross-section of the Central School of Arts and Crafts building on Southampton Row, carved between 1925 and 1926.
[1] In early 1950, Perry began renting an empty room in her home in Camden to a doctoral student at King's College named Bill Pearson.
Pearson was a closeted gay man and often brought married female friends to dinner at Perry's house in an attempt to stress his heterosexuality to his landlady, though there is no record of her suspicions of him nor disdain of such affairs.
[1] By the time she retired in the late 1950s, Perry's artistic portfolio included dozens of posters, wood engravings, drawings, playing card designs, book illustrations, maps, signs, murals, and more.
Her design was the last Valentine's Day telegram form offered by the General Post Office until 1951 due to the complications and shortages that resulted from WWII.
[1] Frank Pick, the administrator responsible for developing London Underground's visual identity in the early 20th century, spotted Perry's work in 1927 and hired her to design The Empire Under One Roof at The Imperial Institute.
[17] Several years later, she was chosen to illustrate numerous posters that advertised which flowers and fruits were in season in an attempt to encourage citizens to get outdoors and travel.
The bottom left corner had a small line of text from Perry that read: "...with apologies to Paolo Uccello" presumably in reference to her lighthearted take on his work.
[17] Perry found time to add book illustration to her vast design portfolio soon after leaving art school in the late 1920s.
[39] Between 1933 and 1935, Perry was contracted by Cunard-White Star to paint a series of murals for the second-class children's playroom on the ocean liner RMS Queen Mary.
[17] Other artists who were commissioned to work on the RMS Queen Mary at around the same time as Perry included Edward Wadsworth, Dame Laura Knight, Vanessa Bell, Anna Zinkeisen, and Gilbert Bayes.
One of these murals featured her interpretation of Noah's Ark finally finding land, complete with a parade of animals of all varieties exiting the boat.
Perry's ark was registered to 'Liverpool' and featured telephone wires, a kangaroo waving Australia's flag, and an impatient beaver pushing a slow penguin out of the way.
Her 1928 entry was a house map on vellum paper, displayed near the works of Ethelwyn Baker, Dorothy Hutton, Ella Naper, George Edward Hunt, and Mabel Chadburn.