1. Lois Etherington Betteridge was a Canadian silversmith, goldsmith, designer and educator, and a major figure in the Canadian studio craft movement.
15 Facts About Lois Betteridge
1. 2.
Lois Betteridge was the first Canadian silversmith to attain international stature in the post-war studio craft movement.
3.
In 1978, Lois Betteridge became the second recipient of the annual Saidye Bronfman Award, Canada's foremost national award for fine craft.
4.
In 2010, Lois Betteridge received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society of North American Goldsmiths.
5.
Over a six-decade career, Lois Betteridge taught and mentored several generations of Canadian metal artists, smiths, and jewellers, including First Nations sculptor Mary Anne Barkhouse, and fellow Bronfman Award winner Kye-Yeon Son.
6.
Lois Betteridge maintained a studio in Guelph, Ontario until shortly before her death.
7.
Lois Etherington Betteridge was born in 1928 in Drummondville, Quebec, and raised in Hamilton, Ontario.
8.
Lois Betteridge attended the Ontario College of Art, then transferred to the University of Kansas, from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art in 1951.
9.
In 1953, Lois Betteridge opened a studio-gallery in Toronto on the edge of the affluent Rosedale neighbourhood, which enabled her to make initial contacts with designers, architects, collectors and other sources of commission work.
10.
Lois Betteridge participated regularly in multi-media exhibitions at the Bear Lane Gallery in Oxford.
11.
Many were setting up jewellery studios; Lois Betteridge took this as a cue to focus on larger-scale work, and by the mid-1970s, hollowware was the focus of her practice.
12.
The vessel combines features of both a wasp nest and a honeycomb, natural forms that Lois Betteridge studied in detail as part of her design process.
13.
The exposed connections between the individual components of the teapot display the post-modernist and constructivist influences with which Lois Betteridge experimented during this period.
14.
Lois Betteridge was the only Canadian metalsmith of her generation to receive extensive formal training in traditional silversmithing techniques at a university level.
15.
Lois Etherington Betteridge has participated in more than 120 exhibitions in Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Belgium and Japan.