Kate Janeba ( -1985) came to Melbourne from Austria with her husband, the architect Frederick Alois (Fritz) Janeba (1905-1983) in 1939. Kate, who had trained as a potter in Vienna, set up a studio making delicate functional earthenware with satin finish pastel glazes and selling them through the Primrose Pottery Shop. Works are marked with an incised 'FKJ', implying that Fritz had some involvement. He also painted, holding an exhibition of his work at the Athenaeum Art Gallery in 1942. As an architect, he worked initially on the Koornung school at Warrandyte, where the couple settled, moving first in 1941 to a miner's cottage thought to have been owned by Penleigh Boyd, and later building their own house. Fritz went on to join the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Melbourne, where he taught from 1949-1964. Kate became friends with Sylvia Halpern and Elsa Ardern, all three joining the Potters' Cottage at Warrandyte in 1961. In 1964, Fritz took up a professorship at Ankara University. When Kate died in 1985, she bequeathed her 'residuary estate' to the University of Melbourne to set up a Fritz Janeba Travelling Scholarship, but it is not clear that they ever returned to Australia.

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