Ernestine Mills

Ernestine Mills (1871–1959) née Bell, was an English metalworker and enameller, known as an artist, and also as an author and suffrage activist.[1]

Life

She was the daughter of Thomas Evans Bell, who became involved in suffragist committees from the mid-1860s, and was born in Hastings.[2][3] Her mother was Emily Magnus, another freethinker who was an actor and classical musician; she died in 1893.[4] Ernestine was supported for a time by William Edward and Hertha Ayrton.[5]

Ernestine Bell attended the Slade Art School, Finsbury Central Technical School, and South Kensington School of Art; an apprentice to Frederic Shields, she also studied enamelling under Alexander Fisher.[3][6]

Mills joined the Women's Social and Political Union in 1907, and also belonged to the Fabian Women's Group.[3] For the Society of Women Artists, she acted as vice-president for the Craft section for a period.[7]

Works

Mills created jewellery for the Women's Social and Political Union.[7] She wrote The Domestic Problem, Past, Present, and Future (1925), on the nature of domestic work.[8] The Life and Letters of Frederic Shields (1912)[9] was a biography of her teacher.

Family

Ernestine married the doctor Herbert Mills (1868–1947), who shared her Fabian views, and was physician to Sylvia Pankhurst.[4] They had a daughter, Hermia.[10]

Notes

  1. ↑ Angela K. Smith (2000). Women's Writing of the First World War: An Anthology. Manchester University Press. p. 329. ISBN 978-0-7190-5072-5.
  2. ↑ Elizabeth Crawford (15 April 2013). The Women's Suffrage Movement in Britain and Ireland: A Regional Survey. Routledge. p. 201. ISBN 978-1-136-01062-0.
  3. 1 2 3 sculpture.gla.ac.uk/, Mrs Ernestine Mills.
  4. 1 2 2010 Sylvia Pankhurst Memorial Lecture, V. Irene Cockroft
  5. ↑ Elizabeth Crawford (2 September 2003). The Women's Suffrage Movement: A Reference Guide 1866-1928. Routledge. p. 22. ISBN 1-135-43402-6.
  6. ↑ V&A, The Peacock Sconce.
  7. 1 2 V&A, Mirror.
  8. ↑ Lucy Lethbridge (18 November 2013). Servants: A Downstairs History of Britain from the Nineteenth Century to Modern Times. W. W. Norton & Company. p. 156. ISBN 978-0-393-24109-9.
  9. ↑ The Life and Letters of Frederic Shields at Internet Archive
  10. ↑ Jeremy Haas (1984). Holman Hunt and the Light of the World. p. 233. ISBN 978-0-85967-683-0.

External links

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