Pinwill sisters

Mary, Ethel and Violet were three of seven daughters born to Elizabeth Annie Greatorex, a musical woman and church organist, after her marriage in 1867 to the Rev. Edmund Pinwill, who became vicar at Ermington, Devon, when she was 28 years old in 1880. He worked with his uncle J. D. Sedding, who employed a team of masons, builders and carvers for the work. Elizabeth invited the head of the carving team to teach woodcarving to her daughters, the oldest of whom was 13 in 1884, in the evenings, in a workshop set up in a harness room above stables and furnished with benches and tools. The girls' grandfather had been an amateur carver and his books and tools were helpful to them in their studies. It was also considered quite ordinary at that time for young women to learn woodcarving alongside other skills such as sewing, drawing and singing in order that they might be considered more accomplished and thus more marriageable. For Elizabeth, though, marrying off her daughters was not her main concern. She was preparing at least some of them for an alternative to marriage. Of the seven girls, Mary, Ethel and Violet took to the carving lessons and became expert professionals in an era when there was a demand, especially within the Anglo Catholic community, for ecclesiastical artwork in churches. ==Professional ecclesiastical carving==

pulpit by the Pinwill sisters The carving of a pulpit for Ermington church by the three sisters in 1889 received excellent reviews. Their three-panelled reredos showing the Nativity, the Ascension and the Last Supper, designed for the East end of Chilthorne Domer church in Somerset, England, produced in the same year also received outstanding reviews. By September 1890, Mary had set up a workshop in Plymouth and also offered lessons in carving. Not long afterwards Edmund H. Sedding located the offices of his architectural practice in Plymouth at the same address. Sedding worked in the context of the Arts and Crafts movement, which emphasised localness, the promotion of crafts to the status of art, and which was relatively open to women. It was their mother's initial idea and she arranged for her daughters to have wood carving lessons. The daughters were encouraged by the training, the positive response to their work and their father in their choice of profession. He was the "head of the household", he would have been the person who filled in the 1891 census where the name and age of each of the three sisters is followed by the occupation listed as, 'Professional carver (wood)'. Other examples of the work produced by the workshop are the rood screen at Lewtrenchard, Devon == Changes in the Pinwill workshop ==

In 1900, Mary married and as was expected of women of her social standing at the time, gave up paid employment. Ethel and Violet continued to develop their business together. Violet took over Mary's role in Plymouth and in 1901 started teaching men and boys at the Plymouth Technical School's Art School. This gave her access to the good apprentices needed for the many large and small scale projects throughout Devon and Cornwall that Sedding and other architects commissioned and designed and the Pinwill sisters carved. By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Violet, now the sole proprietor of the business, had gradually changed the company name to V. Pinwill Carver., and was employing 29 men and boys in the company, as carvers and joiners. The number of commissions declined as the war went on and many of her skilled and experienced employees were called up for military service. Violet thus closed the workshop for a time, re-opening afterwards, working on memorials to those killed in the war, as well as other projects. Between the wars, a period of austerity caused difficulties for the workshop and in 1921, Sedding, the workshop's great supporter and patron, died. Violet was by now, however, very capable of producing her own designs. World War II again caused Violet's employees to enlist but also brought memorial commissions in the post war years. Violet continued her teaching until at least 1945, and was finishing off a life size figure of St Peter for a Lancashire church a few days before her death, aged 82, in 1957. ==Legacy==

After Violet died, all her assets were sold off. Plans, designs, maquettes, and workshop tools were sold or destroyed, although hundreds of photographs were kept and donated to the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office and others to the Women's Art Library, Goldsmiths University of London. The blitz of Plymouth in World War II led to the destruction of many buildings containing work by the Pinwill company. Nevertheless, there remain today at least 76 churches in Devon and 92 in Cornwall containing ecclesiastical wood carvings by the Pinwill workshop, as well as 20 commissions in 13 other counties, secular and military works, and pieces of furniture made for friends and family, making a tally of some 650 individual items. == Quotes ==

"Their meticulous repairs, imaginative reinventions and new interpretations delight the eye and make the spirit soar." Peter Beacham OBE 2020. ==References==