Winifred Gill 1891–1981, artist, social reformer and craftswoman. Her extensive correspondence is an important source of information about the Omega Workshop, 1913–1919, set up by

Roger Fry Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developme ...

of the

Bloomsbury Group The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Strac ...

Early life

Winifred Gill was born in

Guildford Guildford () is a town in west Surrey, around southwest of central London. As of the 2011 census, the town has a population of about 77,000 and is the seat of the wider Borough of Guildford, which had around inhabitants in . The name "Guildf ...

. Her family were

Quakers Quakers are people who belong to a historically Protestant Christian set of denominations known formally as the Religious Society of Friends. Members of these movements ("theFriends") are generally united by a belief in each human's abil ...

, which influenced the rest of her life. She had 6 sisters (one died in infancy) and a brother. She attended the

Slade School of Art The UCL Slade School of Fine Art (informally The Slade) is the art school of University College London (UCL) and is based in London, England. It has been ranked as the UK's top art and design educational institution. The school is organised as ...

, part-time.

Involvement with the Bloomsbury Group and Omega Workshop

Gill joined Roger Fry's family initially to help with childcare, then as a secretary and then as a general assistant. Fry was one of the Bloomsbury Group and started the Omega Workshop in 1913 where artists worked three and a half days a week for thirty shillings (a subsistence wage at the time), with their remaining time available for their own art. Notable artists in the Omega Workshop were

Duncan Grant Duncan James Corrowr Grant (21 January 1885 – 8 May 1978) was a British painter and designer of textiles, pottery, theatre sets and costumes. He was a member of the Bloomsbury Group. His father was Bartle Grant, a "poverty-stricken" major ...

and

Vanessa Bell Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf (née Stephen). Early life and education Vanessa Stephen was the eld ...

. Gill was invited to join them and soon had a key role in running it as well as contributing to its designs and products. Winifred Gill produced woodblock and lino prints, clothing designs, toys, marionettes and jewellery. She took over running the workshop after men were called up during the war, until the workshop closed in 1919. She was a prolific letter-writer to correspondents including

Walter de la Mare Walter John de la Mare (; 25 April 1873 – 22 June 1956) was an English poet, short story writer, and novelist. He is probably best remembered for his works for children, for his poem "The Listeners", and for a highly acclaimed selection of ...

, Roger Fry and others in the Bloomsbury Movement and Omega Workshop and these are now archived in the Bodleian Library and an important source of information about the group.

Later life

She became involved with the

University Settlement The settlement movement was a reformist social movement that began in the 1880s and peaked around the 1920s in United Kingdom and the United States. Its goal was to bring the rich and the poor of society together in both physical proximity and s ...

movement in Bristol and Manchester. She wrote poetry which was published, took part in an archeological dig at

Glastonbury Glastonbury (, ) is a town and civil parish in Somerset, England, situated at a dry point on the low-lying Somerset Levels, south of Bristol. The town, which is in the Mendip district, had a population of 8,932 in the 2011 census. Glastonbury ...

, Somerset and carried out some of the earliest audience research about radio broadcasting for the

BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board ex ...

. During the Second World War she worked with internees on the Isle of Wight. She lived in the East End of London for the last 27 years of her life.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Gill, Winifred 1891 births 1981 deaths 20th-century English painters 20th-century English women artists Alumni of the Slade School of Fine Art English Quakers English women painters 20th-century women painters