Anne Chisholm |
Autobiography
|
Anne Chisholm, nee Welford, b1948
Donor Happy Days by Jacqueline Kay-Hilton
I was born in London, educated at a grammar school, and then went on to study at the College of Librarianship, Wales, after which I was employed as a professional librarian in the London Boroughs of Barnet and Brent. After marrying and starting a family I moved north to Lancashire in 1977 when my husband, Rory, began work for British Aerospace, and we put down our roots in St Annes. After several years of child care I returned to work as librarian at Queen Mary School, St Annes, a post I held for sixteen years.
I have always been influenced by my mother, Margaret Welford, who was a talented amateur artist, jeweller and calligrapher. My first memory of “art” was my mother painting a fish themed still-life at Hornsea College of Art and the plaice, which had a starring role in the picture, appearing on my father’s dinner plate that evening.
I have enjoyed dabbling with lots of arts and crafts - sculpture, painting, jewellery, stained glass, glass fusing and fabric based crafts - and am interested in antiques, particularly the Arts & Crafts Movement.
When my mother died her extensive collection of paintings came to me and my brother. Alongside many of her own pictures we inherited paintings she had bought at various exhibitions in Scotland and Lytham St Annes. Happy Days by Jacqueline Kay, a member of the Lytham St Annes Art Society, was one of those pictures. It is such a lovely timeless scene, which epitomises the delights of St Annes in the sunshine. Our children were privileged to have been raised there and that was one reason that helped me decide to donate the painting to the Lytham St Annes Art Collection in 2009 for everyone to enjoy. I’m proud to say that my grandson, Tom, is following in the family “art” tradition and is studying Fine Art at Camberwell College of Art in London. Maybe in the future one of his paintings will be added to the Collection!
My mother, Margaret Welford, was born in 1918 in north London, where her father was the manager of a W H Smith’s bookshop, and they lived above the shop. When World War II broke out she was working for Barclays Bank and was evacuated to Stoke-on-Trent, along with the rest of the counting house staff. There she met and married my father, who had also been evacuated by Barclays. Stanley joined the Navy and Margaret returned to London to help look after her invalid mother. She also took on war work in the de Havilland factory at Hendon. There she worked twelve hour shifts, making tools for the aircraft industry. It was precision work, the tools having to be made to exact measurements; this was her first introduction to fine metalwork.
After the war they settled down to family life and Margaret’s interest in arts and crafts steadily developed. As well as being a dab hand at knitting, sewing and tricky wallpapering, she took up cane work and, in the late 1950s, started taking oil painting classes at Hornsea College of Art. Still life was her genre and my memory tells me that food was often the subject matter; bread, fruit and fish, which usually became dinner on the evening of the class. She reached such a standard that two of her paintings were accepted for a Royal Academy Summer Show.
In the 1960s Margaret discovered Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute, which was a lovely education centre offering many and varied classes. She chose Calligraphy and Illumination and, after much practice, happily produced such things as the Emblems of the British Isles on vellum, illustrated maps of Scotland and poems surrounded by floral decorations.
Her next venture was into Fine Jewellery and Silversmithing at the Sir John Cass School in London. There she was taught alongside the apprentices from Hatton Garden, and had to be accurate as well as artistic. The first task set was to make and solder a one inch cube of brass with invisible joints, and until the tutor passed this she was not allowed to progress to working with silver and eventually, gold. Setting precious stones, stringing pearls, casting metal using the lost-wax process and hinge-making were all part of the course, and she chose to make some extraordinarily beautiful and unusual pieces of jewellery. She even had her own Hallmark at Goldsmith’s Hall. By the early 1970s Margaret was teaching her own Jewellery and Silversmithing classes in Chelsea and Hampstead Garden suburb.
On retirement Margaret and Stanley moved to Balquhidder in Scotland and a new era began for Margaret’s art. Whilst she still made jewellery, and supplied some local boutiques with silver brooches and pendants to be worn with local tweeds, she also started taking lessons from local watercolour artists. It was a new medium for her and she loved it; mostly still life but some landscape as well. As usual she tackled it with gusto and had a solo exhibition at an Edinburgh Gallery in the mid-1980s. Stanley died in 1987, just at the time that the McLaren High School in Callander was offering tuition to adults, to be taught alongside the children in normal classes. So Margaret signed up for computer programming, woodwork and art. In woodworking, she started by making an audio-tape rack before progressing to tables and an enormous teak garden chair. In her art classes, when she was in her 70s, she passed her ’O’ level exam, Scottish Highers and Six-Form Studies. The courses included painting in various media, printing techniques, design and a lot of art history. She was very sorry when all exams had been completed and she had to leave school.
Her latter years were spent in Lytham St Annes and the Art Society was her first port of call. She joined the Sunday Watercolour Group and once again enjoyed having her paints out. Happy Days was a special picture in her collection and gave her great pleasure. I hope many more people will enjoy it in the future.
Margaret was a reserved and quiet lady and her past achievements were known only to her family. The inscription on her headstone reads:
“Remembered by all as a Creative Spirit”.
Donor Happy Days by Jacqueline Kay-Hilton
I was born in London, educated at a grammar school, and then went on to study at the College of Librarianship, Wales, after which I was employed as a professional librarian in the London Boroughs of Barnet and Brent. After marrying and starting a family I moved north to Lancashire in 1977 when my husband, Rory, began work for British Aerospace, and we put down our roots in St Annes. After several years of child care I returned to work as librarian at Queen Mary School, St Annes, a post I held for sixteen years.
I have always been influenced by my mother, Margaret Welford, who was a talented amateur artist, jeweller and calligrapher. My first memory of “art” was my mother painting a fish themed still-life at Hornsea College of Art and the plaice, which had a starring role in the picture, appearing on my father’s dinner plate that evening.
I have enjoyed dabbling with lots of arts and crafts - sculpture, painting, jewellery, stained glass, glass fusing and fabric based crafts - and am interested in antiques, particularly the Arts & Crafts Movement.
When my mother died her extensive collection of paintings came to me and my brother. Alongside many of her own pictures we inherited paintings she had bought at various exhibitions in Scotland and Lytham St Annes. Happy Days by Jacqueline Kay, a member of the Lytham St Annes Art Society, was one of those pictures. It is such a lovely timeless scene, which epitomises the delights of St Annes in the sunshine. Our children were privileged to have been raised there and that was one reason that helped me decide to donate the painting to the Lytham St Annes Art Collection in 2009 for everyone to enjoy. I’m proud to say that my grandson, Tom, is following in the family “art” tradition and is studying Fine Art at Camberwell College of Art in London. Maybe in the future one of his paintings will be added to the Collection!
My mother, Margaret Welford, was born in 1918 in north London, where her father was the manager of a W H Smith’s bookshop, and they lived above the shop. When World War II broke out she was working for Barclays Bank and was evacuated to Stoke-on-Trent, along with the rest of the counting house staff. There she met and married my father, who had also been evacuated by Barclays. Stanley joined the Navy and Margaret returned to London to help look after her invalid mother. She also took on war work in the de Havilland factory at Hendon. There she worked twelve hour shifts, making tools for the aircraft industry. It was precision work, the tools having to be made to exact measurements; this was her first introduction to fine metalwork.
After the war they settled down to family life and Margaret’s interest in arts and crafts steadily developed. As well as being a dab hand at knitting, sewing and tricky wallpapering, she took up cane work and, in the late 1950s, started taking oil painting classes at Hornsea College of Art. Still life was her genre and my memory tells me that food was often the subject matter; bread, fruit and fish, which usually became dinner on the evening of the class. She reached such a standard that two of her paintings were accepted for a Royal Academy Summer Show.
In the 1960s Margaret discovered Hampstead Garden Suburb Institute, which was a lovely education centre offering many and varied classes. She chose Calligraphy and Illumination and, after much practice, happily produced such things as the Emblems of the British Isles on vellum, illustrated maps of Scotland and poems surrounded by floral decorations.
Her next venture was into Fine Jewellery and Silversmithing at the Sir John Cass School in London. There she was taught alongside the apprentices from Hatton Garden, and had to be accurate as well as artistic. The first task set was to make and solder a one inch cube of brass with invisible joints, and until the tutor passed this she was not allowed to progress to working with silver and eventually, gold. Setting precious stones, stringing pearls, casting metal using the lost-wax process and hinge-making were all part of the course, and she chose to make some extraordinarily beautiful and unusual pieces of jewellery. She even had her own Hallmark at Goldsmith’s Hall. By the early 1970s Margaret was teaching her own Jewellery and Silversmithing classes in Chelsea and Hampstead Garden suburb.
On retirement Margaret and Stanley moved to Balquhidder in Scotland and a new era began for Margaret’s art. Whilst she still made jewellery, and supplied some local boutiques with silver brooches and pendants to be worn with local tweeds, she also started taking lessons from local watercolour artists. It was a new medium for her and she loved it; mostly still life but some landscape as well. As usual she tackled it with gusto and had a solo exhibition at an Edinburgh Gallery in the mid-1980s. Stanley died in 1987, just at the time that the McLaren High School in Callander was offering tuition to adults, to be taught alongside the children in normal classes. So Margaret signed up for computer programming, woodwork and art. In woodworking, she started by making an audio-tape rack before progressing to tables and an enormous teak garden chair. In her art classes, when she was in her 70s, she passed her ’O’ level exam, Scottish Highers and Six-Form Studies. The courses included painting in various media, printing techniques, design and a lot of art history. She was very sorry when all exams had been completed and she had to leave school.
Her latter years were spent in Lytham St Annes and the Art Society was her first port of call. She joined the Sunday Watercolour Group and once again enjoyed having her paints out. Happy Days was a special picture in her collection and gave her great pleasure. I hope many more people will enjoy it in the future.
Margaret was a reserved and quiet lady and her past achievements were known only to her family. The inscription on her headstone reads:
“Remembered by all as a Creative Spirit”.
