Ethel Mary Partridge, Ethel Mary MairetRDI, or Ethel Mary Coomaraswamy (17 February 1872 – 18 November 1952) was a British hand loomweaver, significant in the development of the craft during the first half of the twentieth century.[1]
Early life
Ethel Mary Partridge was born in Barnstaple, Devon, in 1872. Her parents were David (a pharmacist) and Mary Ann (born Hunt) Partridge. She was educated locally and in 1899 she qualified to teach the piano at the Royal Academy of Music.[2] She then took up work as a governess, first in London and later in Bonn, Germany.
She met the art historian and philosopher Ananda Coomaraswamy.[4] The couple married on 19 June 1902 and travelled to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), where he conducted a mineral survey. The couple recorded the arts and crafts of each village, and Mairet kept detailed journals, photographing each craft she observed.[5] They returned to England in 1907 and published their investigations into Ceylon crafts.[4]
Aside from some rudimentary lessons in Ceylon and the British Isles, Ethel Mairet was self-taught as a weaver, spinner and dyer. Although she was well-known for weaving, she acknowledged that she was not a talented weaver.[5]
Over the winter of 1910 Mairet and Coomaraswamy travelled to India. She 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.[5]
In 1910 Coomaraswamy began having an affair and their marriage ended.[7] Ethel then built a house near Barnstaple complete with studios for textile dyeing and weaving.[2] In 1913 she married Philip Mairet and together they established the Thatched House, a joint home and studio near Stratford upon Avon. The studio provided a base for her first weaving workshop. The following year she was visited by Mahatma Gandhi, who knew of her work in Ceylon and was interested in using simple textile techniques in India (see Khadi).[2]
In 1916 she visited Hilary Pepler in Ditchling, and decided to move there herself.[4] In 1917 she completed An Essay on Crafts and Obedience and oversaw the production of the second edition of A Book on Vegetable Dyes, both published by Pepler at St Dominic's Press in Ditchling.
Gospels, Mairet's third and final building project, was completed in late 1920. During the 1930s and 1940s she trained people in weaving and dyeing at her Ditchling studio. 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.[8][5]
The Swiss weaver Marianne Straub came to work with her and to learn more about hand loom weaving;[9] Mairet taught Straub about hand dyeing and spinning as well. Straub introduced a variety of double cloth weaves and developed a friendship with Mairet.[10] Mairet learnt in turn from Straub and this underwrote her belief that hand loom weaving could be used by industry. Straub and Mairet went on three European holidays during the mid 1930s. Straub frequently returned to Mairet and Gospels.[10] A surviving journal written by Mairet from a European journey with her husband in 1927 illustrates how her observations were dominated not by whom she met but what they were wearing.[11]
She is the subject of a biography, A Weaver's Life: Ethel Mairet.[5]
The Ethel Mairet archive is held at the Crafts Study Centre. It includes documents and memorabilia from 1872–1952. Personal documents, travel journals 1910–1938. business and personal letters, books of account and photographs are included[14] and are still a subject of academic study.[11]
^Robertson, Kirsty (1 May 2015) [2005]. "Resistance and Submission, Warp and Weft: Unraveling the Life of Ethel Mairet". Textile: The Journal of Cloth and Culture. 3 (3): 292–317. doi:10.2752/147597505778052486. S2CID154970477.
^ abcdefgCoatts, Margot (31 August 1983). A Weaver's Life: Ethel Mairet, 1872–1952. London Bath: Crafts Council in association with the Crafts Study Centre. ISBN978-0903798709.
