Pinwill sisters

Their vast body of work, gradually adapting from the complex, intricate designs of the Gothic Revival through to the pared-down, plainer style of twentieth-century Modern, is recognised as being of great skill, flair and worth.

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.

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.

[4] 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.

[5] 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.

The Sedding-Pinwill collaboration included the transformation of the church of St Carantoc in Crantock, Cornwall in the period 1899-1902 from a "near ruin to a model of Anglo-Catholicism in a rural Cornish setting....in which the synthesis between design and execution was truly seamless.

"[8][9] Other examples of the work produced by the workshop are the rood screen at Lewtrenchard, Devon[2] (See photo) and carvings at Morwenstow, Cornwall and at the church of St Laurence, Upminster, London.

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.

[17] Violet continued her teaching until at least 1945,[11] as well as large commissions into the 1950s,[18] 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.

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.

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.