Wendy Anne Jopling Ramshaw (26 May 1939 – 9 December 2018) was a British ceramicist, jeweller and sculptor. Her signature ringsets are in 70 public collections in both museums and art galleries.
Life
Ramshaw was born in
Sunderland
Sunderland () is a port city in Tyne and Wear, England. It is the City of Sunderland's administrative centre and in the Historic counties of England, historic county of County of Durham, Durham. The city is from Newcastle-upon-Tyne and is on t ...
in 1939. She studied fabric design at first at
Newcastle-upon-Tyne College of Art and Industrial Design. She was at the
University of Reading
The University of Reading is a public university in Reading, Berkshire, England. It was founded in 1892 as University College, Reading, a University of Oxford extension college. The institution received the power to grant its own degrees in 192 ...
where she met her lifelong partner
David Watkins in 1961.
She went on to study at the
Central School of Art and Design
The Central School of Art and Design was a public school of fine and applied arts in London, England. It offered foundation and degree level courses. It was established in 1896 by the London County Council as the Central School of Arts and Cr ...
in 1969.
She was first noticed when
Mary Quant
Dame Barbara Mary Quant, Mrs Plunket Greene, (born 11 February 1930)The Mary Quant exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 2019-20 stated her year of birth as 1930, and that she became a student at Goldsmiths College around 1950. is a ...
was selling her paper jewellery. Customers had to cut out the jewellery and assemble it from paper patterns. Her signature pieces were developed in about 1965 and consist of gold rings stored on a single post. This was seen as a novel way to store jewellery. This won her the Design Council Award for Innovation in 1972.
Exhibitions include
*Picasso's Ladies (1989)
*Rooms of Dreams (2002)
*Prospero's Table (2004)
*Journey Through Glass (2007)
[
]
Legacy
New gates at Hyde Park by Wendy Ramshaw
In 2009 Graham Hughes wrote a joint biography of Ramshaw and her husband, and fellow designer, David Watkins. Her signature jewellery ringsets are in 70 public collections including the Victoria & Albert Museum
The Victoria and Albert Museum (often abbreviated as the V&A) in London is the world's largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts and design, housing a permanent collection of over 2.27 million objects. It was founded in 1852 and nam ...
, National Museums Scotland
National Museums Scotland (NMS; gd, Taighean-tasgaidh Nàiseanta na h-Alba) is an executive non-departmental public body of the Scottish Government. It runs the national museums of Scotland.
NMS is one of the country's National Collections, ...
, Art Gallery of Western Australia
The Art Gallery of Western Australia (AGWA) is a public art gallery that is part of the Perth Cultural Centre, in Perth. It is located near the Western Australian Museum and State Library of Western Australia and is supported and managed by the ...
, the British Museum
The British Museum is a public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is among the largest and most comprehensive in existence. It docum ...
, Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
and the National Museum of Modern Art in Kyoto.
Further reading
* ''Room of Dreams : Wendy Ramshaw'', 2002
* ''David Watkins, Wendy Ramshaw: A Life’s Partnership''
References
External links
cooper
{{DEFAULTSORT:Ramshaw, Wendy
1939 births
2018 deaths
People from Sunderland
British jewellery designers
Commanders of the Order of the British Empire
Women jewellers