Dame Winefride Pruden

Dame Winefride Pruden 1913 - 2008 Winefride was born in 1913 at Richmond in Surrey and began her education at the Marist convent. She attended Richmond Art School as a painting student and then worked for some time as an art teacher spending the war years working for the NAAFI serving air force stations in Gloucestershire. She was introduced to the Guild of Catholic Artists by the sculptor, by Arthur Pollen, and it was at one of its exhibitions that she met the distinguished silversmith, Dunstan Pruden.

He was living in the Sussex village of Ditchling which had become famous as the home of the artistic community, the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, founded by Eric Gill and Hilary Pepler. The heady mixture of experimental communal living with artists and craftsmen and women, growing their own food, Dominican Catholicism and Ditchling became her spiritual home.

In 1965 Winefride married Dunstan Pruden. They settled at Ditchling and became members of the Guild, Winefride being the first woman member. Dunstan taught her silversmithing and, as well as her literary work, she had already written two books on modem Christian art, she helped him with his many commissions.

After Dunstan death 1974 Winefride took over more of the work of the studio as well as continuing with her journalistic work that included contributions to the Catholic weekly, The Tablet. She had long been involved with the Society of Catholic Artists, the ecumenical Christian Arts Society of which she was chairman for several years, and with the International Society of Christian Artists. Her work with these prompted friends to recommend her for a papal knighthood in 1994. She once said that being a catholic for her was not so much a matter of accepting a set of beliefs, but of belonging with the faithful people of God

 
Return to first page
Back