carver and metal-worker, was born Winifred Davies in Lancashire. She came to Sydney with her family and later graduated in nursing from the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital. She married the Methodist minister Michael Scott Fletcher (1868-1947) on 4 June 1896. After completing his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees at Sydney University, her husband studied at Oxford in 1909-11. Mrs Fletcher’s interest in craftwork began at this time.
The Fletcher’s returned to Sydney in 1912. On 30 November Michael was appointed the first master of King’s College at the University of Queensland; Winifred assisted in the domestic arrangements of the college. She was one of the foundation members of the Arts and Crafts Society of Queensland and exhibited with it in 1915, when she showed a carved prie dieu (made for the College chapel). She was involved with the Queensland Branch of the Red Cross from the beginning of World War I until moving to Sydney with her husband in 1916 when he was appointed foundation master of Wesley College at the University of Sydney. When Michael Fletcher returned to Brisbane in 1923 to take up the Chair of Philosophy at Queensland University, his wife resumed her activities with the Arts and Crafts Society. She was Honorary Secretary in 1925-26, Deputy President in 1929, President in 1930 and 1936 and, later, Honorary Life Member. In 1934 she arranged a series of talks on craft on Radio 4QR.
Fletcher exhibited copper and brass work in 1924-27 but thereafter, because of the greater ease of manufacture, exhibited pewter ware almost exclusively until 1938 (and again in 1946). In 1932 she exhibited metalwork with the Royal Queensland Art Society and the New South Wales Society of Arts and Crafts; a blotter with a pewter cover decorated with strapwork adapted from the great Celtic Book of Kells was purchased from the latter exhibition by the Art Gallery of New South Wales. She again showed with the Sydney Society in 1933-35. By 1940 she had largely given up her craft and in 1943 resigned from the Red Cross because of ill health. She lived on, however, for a further 19 years.
- Writers:
- Cooke, Glenn R.
- Date written:
- 1995
- Last updated:
- 1992
