h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My children's grandma died the other day. Not my mother, but my ex's mother, called Mollie.

Mollie was a fantastic woman (so cool I named my daughter after her). She was a brilliant professional artist, who turned her hand to many artist skills during her life. She was born in Yorkshire, but as she said, escaped, because she couldn't bear the twitching net curtains of a rural village.

She won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art in London during the war (her escape route from the net curtains!), and spent part of the war helping the effort by retouching warships and things out of photos. She was offered a scholarship to an art college in Florence, but had to turn it down, because by then she was pregnant with her first child, not going was always one of her big regrets.

She went on to become one of the group of professional Chelsea Potters in Chelsea in the sixties, and also sold handmade silver and enamel jewelry, which she made, along with pottery, in the kiln that she kept in my kids' fathers bedroom when he was a lad.

She took up printing, and etching - when you carve the picture into metal and produced prints from the etchings.

Later in life, when she was really getting on a bit, she took up glass engraving, and within a few years really mastered that too, producing the most beautiful glasses, and other engraved items. She had a cottage in Cornwall, and in the door was a swirly blue glass circle, with a dolphin swimming in the glass that she'd engraved. She also produced items like tigers in caves, so not names on glasses type engraving at all. She was so naturally talented that she was invited to become an honourary member of the Guild of Glass Engravers, whose patron was the Queen Mother.

Throughout her life Mollie painted in oils and acrylics. As she became very old she took on watercolour painting, and again was so skilled at that, producing paintings of all sorts of things, teddies for the grandchildren, and bowls of grapes that glistened with drops of water, with added nasty wasps, just to give them a bit of the evil edge - she wasn't a conformist in any way!

So here's to Mollie. A totally extraordinary woman, a woman's libber before there was a womans' lib. A non conformist, a lovely woman, and an incredibly talented artist. I'll miss her...

to Mollie and a for you and your family...

Thanks, she really was a special woman. Probably the closest thing I ever had to a mum really. She was pretty old, but still living at home looking after herself when she died, which is what she really really wanted. She always asked me to come in and 'top her' if she was moved into a home with 'all those miserable old farts'...

very inspirational person. my thoughts are with family and friends.

I hope a museum will do retrospective, because deserves one and might inspire some one else...

Traveller in Time holding a
"Be strong, .

So she did not become 'one of those miserable old farts', I think that is what we all would like to manage . "

She certainly didn't!

Eccentric, yes, definitely!

to Mollie and may she rest in peace far from the miserable old farts!

They may have missed by a couple of years but both my parents were at the Royal College of Art 1933 - 1936, Mum stayed on till there 1939 as she was appointed student demonstrator. I am sure they spoke of a Mollie but alas they have both died so I cannot confirm that it is indeed a small world!

Hello Peta,
Sorry to read your sad news. Pamela (from Points Askew)

Hi Wendy and Pamela.

Thanks for the good wishes.

It does sound like Mollie and your parents may well have known each other - I know Mollie was there before war broke out, and I think it was pretty small at that time, not too many students. Mollie's husband Douglas was there too, at the same time, but again, he died about 15 years ago now.

Peta,

Mum and Dad held fond and happy memories of their time at the Royal College of Art. I don't have many photographs from that time and no groups with the names written on the back unfortunately.

to you all...very sad to lose a person like that who has been influential to you but at least you were wise enough to choose her to be grandma to your kids.

I'm sure she'll be watching over them from where she is now. And you.

Blood isn't thicker than water.

Love is.

Thanks!

I'm going to Mollie Senior's funeral this afternoon. It will be sad, she was a lovely person, but I know she'll be looking down on us all telling us not to be miserable. to her, where ever she is now!

Hi Wendy,

I've got a few pictures of her, but none as you say of her at college. I don't think people got to take so many pictures during the war years, it was a bit of an indulgence I guess.

I have got a few paintings that Mollie posed for when she was there, the artists all posed as models for each other, so you never know, your parents' might be in one of the paintings. I guess for her, a painting of her is a better legacy than a photo anyway!

Hi Pamela,

Thanks for the good wishes.

Good to see you over here too..

Peta,

Will raise a glass for Mollie this afternoon.

A painting is a far more personal than a photo for even though it does not capture the actual image of the person like a photograph, it is something they created, they looked at, they thought about and touched.

My parents left a sizable collection of wood engravings and etchings from their RCA days. Sadly none of their paintings or drawings from that period have survived. You would probably spot Mum if she was in one of Mollie's paintings as she had a shock of black curly hair.