Joyce Himsworth

From an early age she worked with her father, the polymath Joseph Beeston Himsworth (1874–1968) making small spoons and items of jewellery.

[1][2][3][4] Joyce Himsworth and her father registered a joint mark at Sheffield Assay Office in 1925, which comprised both sets of their initials.

However, just a year later, having established her own workshop at 31 Chelsea Road, Brincliffe, Sheffield she began to use this mark on work she produced as an independent designer silversmith.

In 1934 she received a first class City and Guilds certificate in Goldsmithing and Silversmithing and awarded the highest mark nationally for her enamel work.

[1][12][13] Inspired by the art and crafts movement, Himsworth followed in the footsteps of earlier Sheffield trained silversmiths and jewellery designers, Omar Ramsden and John Walker.

[3][1] Himsworth began a working relationship with Leonard Beaumont in early 1935, taking inspiration from his art deco influenced coloured linocuts.

[17] A trip with her father in 1934 to the Soviet Union to view the decorative art collections held at the Hermitage and Kremlin had a lasting impression on her.

[1] Himsworth was fiercely individualistic, she never married and spent her entire adult life in her Sheffield home with its purpose built silversmithing studio.

[19][20][21] Prior to the outbreak of World War Two she gave a series of lectures on Scandinavian silverware design to the Sheffield Silver Trade Technical Society.