She was born in 1857, the daughter of Richard Lowndes, the rector of St Mary's Church, Sturminster Newton in Dorset, and his wife Annie Harriet Kaye.

"Women, generally amateurs, might occasionally design windows and even take some part in their execution, but they rarely if ever practiced the whole art independently as a full time professional occupation".

[3] While working at the Britten and Gilson workshop, Lowndes met renowned stained glass artist Christopher Whall.

[3] Drury was the foreman at the Britten and Gilson workshop, and co-instructor of stained glass with Whall at the Central School of Arts and Crafts.

[4] The venture developed out of Lowndes and Drury's shared experience of working for a big studio, and they created their new enterprise to meet the needs of the new school of independent artists associated with the emerging Arts and Crafts movement.

The building at 9, 10, 11 and 12 Lettice Street was established as a stained glass studio for works commissioned by Lowndes and Drury and for use by independent artists.

Lowndes' training as an artist and stained-glass designer encouraged the use of bold shapes and a love of full, rich colours, using striking combinations of green and blue, magenta and orange.

Such banners were designed with female images like flowers, lit lamps, shells, sunrays, winged hearts; and to honour female heroines like Boadicea, Elizabeth Fry, Florence Nightingale, Marie Curie, Josephine Butler, Jane Austen, Mary Wollstonecraft, Charlotte Brontë and even 'Victoria, Queen and Mother'.

These were carried in their hundreds or thousands in London's Pageant of Great Women 1909, Hyde Park Rally 1910, From Prison to Citizenship 1911, Pilgrimage for Women's Suffrage 1913, and later that year at the grand funeral procession of Emily Wilding Davison, the suffrage movement's martyr who threw herself under the King's horse at the Epsom Derby.

[8][6] An album of Lowndes' original banner designs (detailed on paper in watercolour and often accompanied by fabric swatches) resides at the Women's Library at the London School of Economics.