From its opening in 1960, the Black Dolphin Motel in Merimbula was widely admired amongst Boyd’s contemporaries. Architecture & Arts magazine rated it one of the ten best buildings of 1960-61, and in 1970 historian David Saunders highlighted Boyd’s use of eucalypt log columns as prescient of the Sydney School’s organic regionalist style. As Boyd was celebrating honestly expressed local materials in his exteriors, the Black Dolphin’s dining room demonstrated his affinity for the material and structural directness of traditional Japanese architecture.

The Black Dolphin Motel restaurant was highly regarded as a culinary destination during the 1960s and 1970s. The chef had a reputation for dishes and flavours outside the norm, and the well-appointed dining room became a key part of the Black Dolphin’s attraction. The interiors were undertaken in collaboration with influential Sydney designer Marion Hall Best, and while Boyd’s raw log posts celebrated local materials, a Japanese influence was apparent in the screen panels that lined the dining room walls and the Japanese-made furniture sourced through Bruce Anderson’s store Anderson’s Furniture.

Another Japanese connection is more obscure - the perspective drawing here was made in 1960 by Peter Little, a skilled renderer working in Boyd’s office. In 1961 Little is recorded in the RAIA yearbook as the only Australian architect known to be working in Japan - listed under the address of Motoo Take at Waseda University in Tokyo.