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Susan Bosence 1913 –1996
The importance of Susan Bosence in the history of 20th century craft is due to both the quality of her work and her influence as a teacher. Susan’s work is in no way "museum art": her textiles were made for use - for clothes or in the home. Their scale is chiefly domestic and they look at their best in natural light. She wrote, "the final piece of cloth should be a whole piece of cloth - the quality of the cloth, the colour and the pattern of equal standard, lovely to look at, handle and use." 
In 1939 Susan Payne became secretary to W B Curry, headmaster of Dartington Hall School - part of the Devon estate owned by Dorothy and Leonard Elmhirst. She married Wilfred "Bo" Bosence, a teacher at the junior school in 1942. However, it was the experience of seeing Phyllis Barron and Dorothy Larcher’s printed fabrics in the Elmhirst’s own home shortly after World War II, which started Sue on her life’s work as a craftswoman. She recalled, "these textiles were a revelation to me after the muddled designs and imitation ‘chintzes’ of the forties. They possessed an affinity with the house we were to live in with its barn foundations, whitewashed stone walls and wooden floors."
By the 1960s Susan Bosence had planned and opened a dye house and printing classroom for the new Adult Education Centre at Dartington. She ran classes, cut blocks, tested dyes and carried out her own production. The Bosences left Dartington in 1966, moving to Sigford on the edge of Dartmoor where an adjoining stable block became Sue’s workshop. She continued to teach at Dartington and the textile departments of Camberwell College of Art, London and the West Surrey College of Art and Design, Farnham. In 1985 she wrote and illustrated Hand Block Printing and Resist Dyeing.
Susan Bosence, who died in 1996, has a tremendous reputation as a craftswoman and teacher. Her work can be found in the collections at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the Crafts Study Centre, Bath and at the Crafts Council. This exhibition offers us an opportunity to showcase her work and reassess the world wide printing and dying techniques which so affected the long career of this influential craftswoman.
