Hester Wagstaff

She was an accomplished jeweller and co-founded the Petersfield Workshops and Bookshop.

• Name — Hester Marion Wagstaff • Other Names — Waggles • Born — 15 June 1892 • Birthplace — Saffron Walden, England • Died — 27 January 1953 • Place of death — Petersfield, England • Education — St Marylebone Polytechnic Institute School of Art • Occupation — Author, illustrator • Family — J Archibald Allen (uncle)

Hester Marion Wagstaff was born to Jane Pearson and Ernest Hamilton Wagstaff in Leighton Buzzard, England. She had an older sister. In 1910 Wagstaff won first prize in memory drawing in a Midland Counties Union examination. She attended Leighton Buzzard Evening School and the St Marylebone Polytechnic Institute School of Art, where she became friends with Flora Twort and Cecily Peele. Wagstaff lived in Petersfield from 1918 until her death. She lived at Oakshott Hanger, a hamlet just outside Petersfield, with Twort, Winifred Stamp and Maria Brahms. She was on the committee of the Group for the Preservation and Improvement of Petersfield from 1945, and was a founding member of the Petersfield Arts and Crafts Society. When Stamp died in 1948, she left her effects to Wagstaff.

In 1912 and 1913 Wagstaff exhibited at the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society in London. In 1913, as part of a national competition, she was awarded a gold medal for a stained wood-carved tabletop. It was exhibited at the Victoria and Albert Museum and together with a "decorated box to hold theatrical make-up" was seen by Queen Elizabeth who was "much charmed" and expressed an interest in buying them. The school's governors purchased the pieces and presented them to the Queen. The UK's Board of Trade also sent pieces of her work to the 1913 Ghent International Exposition. In 1914 she exhibited an oblong mirror frame as part of The National Competition of Art in London. Wagstaff was a member of the Society of Women Artists and the Three Arts Club. In the 1940s she exhibited paintings at the Petersfield Arts and Crafts exhibition. Together with Twort, Brahms and Harry Roberts, Wagstaff ran the Petersfield Workshops and Bookshop in Petersfield town centre, where she also sold her jewellery. After her death, the Petersfield Arts and Crafts Society established the Hester Wagstaff Memorial Prize. It is still awarded annually.

• Petersfield in 1922 (1922) Pub. Petersfield Bookshop - illustrator • Eton College (1937) which was subsequently featured in Eton Medley, published in 1948