In 1934 the managing director of Royal Doulton, Cuthbert Bailey, had an idea for a new line of children’s nurseryware. His second daughter, Barbara Vernon Bailey, had what he called “a small talent” with the pen and brush, creating storylines around her favourite animals. He thought he could develop the new line around the antics of her family of bunnies.

As a child she had filled sketchbooks with drawings of the countryside, and of the animals kept by her six brothers and sisters — some of which were not exactly pets, since they included pigs, cows, horses and ferrets, as well as the more cuddly dogs, cats and guinea-pigs. But it was the rabbits in the fields that really delighted her and which she captured especially vividly. Exciting, gripping and even terrifying, her father’s bedtime stories about Mr Fox and the rabbits, rolling over weeks and months, were largely responsible for her inspiration.

However, by 1934 Barbara had been an enclosed nun for four years — an Augustinian canoness regular of the Lateran in a monastery with a school attached. So she required permission from the prioress, a formidable but charismatic Belgian aristocrat, to take time off from her monastic duties for a venture that may have sounded frivolous. Happily, permission was granted in the optimistic belief that only a dozen or so sketches would be necessary.

The sample illustrations that Sister Barbara produced were captivating, and her father’s belief in their potential was reinforced. The dozen sketches eventually grew to thousands, some being rather furtively produced at the dead of night with only the stub of a candle for illumination.

She drew on a wealth of affectionate memories, mostly of her father, who in Bunnyland was represented always with his round glasses and puffing pipe, a twinkling but superior being, whether struggling to fix his braces or creasing his trousers with the garden roller.

The first Bunnykins china from Royal Doulton was launched that year, and it was an instant success. Within a year pieces of it were in the nursery of the Japanese Royal Family and on low tables in other high places, as well as being favoured christening presents at all levels. By the start of the Second World War there were 66 different scenes on the nurseryware.

But Sister Barbara no longer had time to continue with this sideline. She was teaching nearly full-time in the school, and her superior no longer felt it appropriate for her to be so distracted — and, of course, her religious vow of poverty meant that payment for her work was out of the question.

So the work was continued and implemented by other artists at Royal Doulton and the Bunnykins label remains popular to this day. The early pieces, signed “Barbara Vernon”, are eagerly sought in collectors’ markets, and fetch high prices. There are Bunnykins collectors clubs in the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, and two societies in Britain are devoted entirely to Bunnykins.

Barbara Vernon Bailey (Sister Mary Barbara) was born in 1910, the second daughter of Cuthbert and Constance Bailey, at Bulkeley Hall, Woore, in Shropshire. She had four sisters and two brothers, and was taught largely at home until her teens, when she went to board at The Priory, Haywards Heath, the school where she would herself teach in later years, attached to the Monastery of the Canonesses Regular of the Lateran.

Based on the Augustinian rule, this order was founded in the 16th century in Louvain, France, its recruits coming largely from aristocratic English recusant families in the time of persecution. It maintained a strict tradition and culture associated with fine learning and high ideals.

Sister Barbara entered the monastery at 19 and remained a committed and energetic member of the community for 70 years. In the school she taught history with passionate intensity. She also taught Russian, which she had learnt in a year, fine art and the history of art. Generations of pupils respected and adored her — and did correspondingly well in their exams. Many retained strong connections until the day of her death.

A BBC interviewer sent recently to visit Sister Barbara expected to find a sweet and gentle old lady, and was surprised to find a woman with robust and up-to-date political views and a wide-ranging curiosity. She drew sweet cuddly bunnies, but she was accepting and unshockable.

Sister Mary Barbara, artist, canonness and teacher, was born on June 28, 1910. She died on May 4, 2003, aged 92.