Winifred Gill

Early life

Winifred Gill was born in Guildford. Her family were Quakers, which influenced the rest of her life. She had 6 sisters (one died in infancy) and a brother. She attended the Slade School of Art, part-time.

Involvement with the Bloomsbury Group and Omega Workshop

Gill joined Roger Fry's family initially to help with childcare, then as a secretary and then as a general assistant. Fry was one of the Bloomsbury Group and started the Omega Workshop in 1913 where artists worked three and a half days a week for thirty shillings (a subsistence wage at the time), with their remaining time available for their own art. Notable artists in the Omega Workshop were Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell. Gill was invited to join them and soon had a key role in running it as well as contributing to its designs and products.

Winifred Gill produced woodblock and lino prints, clothing designs, toys, marionettes and jewellery. She took over running the workshop after men were called up during the war, until the workshop closed in 1919. She was a prolific letter-writer to correspondents including Walter de la Mare, Roger Fry and others in the Bloomsbury Movement and Omega Workshop and these are now archived in the Bodleian Library and an important source of information about the group.

Later life

She became involved with the University Settlement movement in Bristol and Manchester. She wrote poetry which was published, took part in an archeological dig at Glastonbury, Somerset and carried out some of the earliest audience research about radio broadcasting for the BBC. During the Second World War she worked with internees on the Isle of Wight. She lived in the East End of London for the last 27 years of her life.