1. Ethel Mary Partridge, Ethel Mary Mairet RDI, or Ethel Mary Coomaraswamy was a British hand loom weaver, significant in the development of the craft during the first half of the twentieth century.
18 Facts About Ethel Mairet
1. 2.
Ethel Mairet was educated locally and in 1899 she qualified to teach the piano at the Royal Academy of Music.
3.
Ethel Mairet then took up work as a governess, first in London and later in Bonn, Germany.
4.
Ethel Mairet met the art historian and philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy.
5.
The couple recorded the arts and crafts of each village, and Ethel Mairet kept detailed journals, photographing each craft she observed.
6.
Ethel Mairet made her first experiments with weaving and dyeing in 1909 in Chipping Camden.
7.
Ethel Mairet studied vegetable dyes in the Bodleian Library, Oxford and is said to have travelled to the Lake District to learn weaving during this period.
8.
Ethel Mairet wrote to the Ashbees over this period, and kept a journal detailing her discoveries of rare textiles and decorative jewellery, noting the vegetable dyes used.
9.
Ethel Mairet then built a house near Barnstaple complete with studios for textile dyeing and weaving.
10.
Ethel Mairet's training is said to have influenced all the handweavers of that generation, including Hilary Bourne, Valentine KilBride, Elizabeth Peacock, Petra Gill and Peter Collingwood.
11.
The Swiss weaver Marianne Straub came to work with her and to learn more about hand loom weaving; Ethel Mairet taught Straub about hand dyeing and spinning as well.
12.
Ethel Mairet learnt in turn from Straub and this underwrote her belief that hand loom weaving could be used by industry.
13.
Straub and Ethel Mairet went on three European holidays during the mid 1930s.
14.
Ethel Mairet was a member of both the Red Rose Guild of Craftsmen and the Guild of Weavers, Spinners and Dyers, and in 1937 she became the first woman awarded the Royal Society of Arts title of Royal Designer for Industry.
15.
Ethel Mairet taught at the Brighton College of Art from 1939 until 1947.
16.
Ethel Mairet died in Ditchling Common in 1952 and was buried in Brighton, at St Nicholas' churchyard.
17.
Ethel Mairet is the subject of a biography, A Weaver's Life: Ethel Mairet.
18.
The Ethel Mairet archive is held at the Crafts Study Centre.