Island painter Margot Datz’s latest work is also one of her earliest Martha’s Vineyard commissions — 12 custom stair risers depicting Island birds and plants, painted in collaboration with Linda Carnegie more than 40 years ago and given new life as a first-of-its-kind wall piece.

The colorful, sprightly images might have landed elsewhere, or even languished in storage, if an Edgartown woman hadn’t spotted them in a 19th-century house under reconstruction last year.

“When I saw this, I said to my husband, it looks like Margot’s work,” said Deb Daley, who had never met Ms. Datz but was familiar with her paintings.

A year and a half later, Ms. Datz has restored the stair risers so Ms. Daley can display them as a single, jumbo-sized painting, with a 13th panel at the bottom honoring their original address.

The two women also have become good friends. This week, over tea at Ms. Datz’s home and studio in Edgartown, they spoke with the Gazette about the era-spanning art adventure that brought them together.

Ms. Datz recalled painting the stairs around 1981, in partnership with her then-business partner Linda Carnegie.

“We worked in collaboration for a couple of years,” said Ms. Datz, who painted some of the birds and all of the background plants.

The house, at 114 North Water street, has since changed hands and was gutted for redevelopment last spring. That’s when Ms. Daley, while walking her dogs along North Water street, spotted the stairway amid the building’s old bones.

Margot, Deb and Gauguin the cat.

Ray Ewing

Margot, Deb and Gauguin the cat.

Ray Ewing

“It was just standing there and I’m like, ‘Wow, that’s really beautiful,” Ms. Daley said.

Her husband agreed with her, Ms. Daley said, and a day or two later she visited the property’s current owner, builder Michael Hegarty.

“I said ‘Hello, my name is Deb Daley. What are you going to do with the painted stairs? Because I love art, and I would like to restore them,’” she recalled.

“And he said, ‘Sure, you can have them for free,’” Ms. Daley said.

“He was just trying to figure out what to do [with them] because he did say they were beautiful . . . so I think he was just relieved that I came by,” she said.

The one catch, Ms. Daley said, was that she had to remove the risers by 3 p.m. that same day.

But her luck was holding. A worker from a nearby job site agreed to saw the stair risers loose for cash, and at 2:30 p.m. Ms. Daley became the owner of 12 extremely battered original works by the Vineyard’s two best-known muralists.

“They were a mess,” said Ms. Datz, who recently completed restoring the risers for Ms. Daley after being unavailable for commissions last year.

Generations of toes and heels had dug into the panels, leaving divots and chipped paint in their wake.

The rugged texture is still evident beneath Ms. Datz’s restoration, but for Ms. Daley, that authenticity adds to the appeal.

“I love history,” she said.

Mural was originally created on 12 stair risers.

Ray Ewing

Mural was originally created on 12 stair risers.

Ray Ewing

The stair risers are more than an Island collectible; they also represent a bygone era in interior design, Ms. Datz said.

“There is a big resurgence of decorative painting at the end of every century,” she said.

The timing was opportune for the young Ms. Datz, who arrived on the Vineyard in the late 1970s from the much-ornamented city of New Orleans. The plain white paint and polyurethaned pine of many Island homes spurred Ms. Datz and Ms. Carnegie to form their own business, Silk Purse Designs, specializing in decorative painting.

“We could take anything and turn it into something,” Ms. Datz recalled.

Both artists went on to become individually acclaimed for their murals, on and off the Island. But most of the work in recent decades has been in libraries and other public places, as decorative painting is no longer favored by home-design tastemakers.

“With a birth of every new century, they throw the baby out with the bathwater and they strip everything — because it does tend to get rather lavish,” said Ms. Datz, who long ago became accustomed to the fleeting nature of her decorative work.

“I tell people [who] are kind of interested or curious in mural painting, be prepared to have 95 per cent of your stuff painted over,” she said. “The next interior decorator comes in, wants a whole new look, paints the whole house gray, and you’re buried underneath latex.”

That’s what makes this restoration particularly special, Ms. Datz said.

“It’s very validating, any time somebody takes this extra effort to preserve something of mine,” she said.

Ms. Daley and her husband are still figuring out how they want to display the stair risers in their home — the obvious choice, their stairwell, doesn’t have the wall space.

But she, Ms. Datz and Mr. Hegarty are all pleased that the 44-year-old paintings are getting a new life as fine art — and Ms. Daley has gained two new friends as well.

“It was clear that Deb had a true passion for the stair risers [and] I’m grateful to now call Deb a friend,” Mr. Hegarty told the Gazette, by text.