Lois Betteridge

Lois Etherington Betteridge was a Canadian silversmith, goldsmith, designer and educator, and a major figure in the Canadian studio craft movement.

Lois Etherington Betteridge was born in 1928 in Drummondville, Quebec, and raised in Hamilton, Ontario.

Betteridge entered Canadian silversmithing in the 1950s, at a time when the field was dominated by male artists and designers, many of them emigrés from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Europe.

In fact, Betteridge was the first Canadian silversmith to attain international stature in the post-war studio craft movement.

In the early 1950s, there were few Canadians working in the metal arts and Betteridge had little success connecting with the nascent metal arts community.

Rather than teaching, or working in the commercial jewellery or silverware industries—common strategies for young metal artists at the start of their careers—she focused on developing a network of clients for her custom-designed jewellery and domestic and liturgical hollowware.

This individualistic approach continued to be a defining feature of her studio practice throughout the 1950s and 1960s.

After completing her graduate degree, Betteridge returned to Canada once more, and for three years taught weaving, design and metal arts at the MacDonald Institute (now part of the University of Guelph).

Finding that full-time teaching distracted from her studio work, Betteridge resigned and began making plans to further her studies in England.

In the period between resigning and completing her arrangements, however, she met and married Keith Betteridge, a young English post-graduate student at the Ontario Veterinary College (now also part of the University of Guelph).

She attended the Ontario College of Art, (now OCAD University) then transferred to the University of Kansas, from which she graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art in 1951.

Returning to Canada, she augmented her academic training with evening classes in chasing and repoussé at the Provincial Institute of Trades (now Ryerson University) in Toronto, Ontario.

In 1953, Betteridge opened a studio-gallery in Toronto on the edge of the affluent Rosedale neighbourhood, which enabled her to make initial contacts with designers, architects, collectors and other sources of commission work.

Between 1954 and 1956, she attended the Cranbrook Academy of Art and completed a Master of Fine Art degree.

Following the completion of her undergraduate degree, Betteridge returned to Canada and opened a small studio in Oakville, Ontario, funded by a gift of $500 from her father.

In 1961 they moved to England, where Betteridge balanced the care of a young family and the establishment of her studio practice, while her husband completed doctoral studies in veterinary medicine.

She participated regularly in multi-media exhibitions at the Bear Lane Gallery in Oxford.

As she had done in Toronto, Betteridge used the gallery as a platform from which to reach a growing number of custom design clients.

Betteridge and her family returned to Canada in 1967.

In the midst of the year-long social and cultural celebration that marked the nation’s Centennial Year, she found that the Canadian craft movement had finally developed critical mass.

Professionally trained metalsmiths were graduating from art schools and community colleges in appreciable numbers.

Many were setting up jewellery studios; Betteridge took this as a cue to focus on larger-scale work, and by the mid-1970s, hollowware was the focus of her practice.

As she sought to re-establish herself in Canada, Betteridge resisted the pathway toward teaching at one of the new craft schools, preferring to hold workshops and to lecture as her schedule permitted.

In the 1970s, she also began to offer informal apprenticeships in her own studio.

Throughout the 1970s, Betteridge’s work evolved, as she entered a self-described "art" phase characterized by more expansive, organic forms, highly textured surfaces and objects whose form embodied witty, overt expressions of function.

This more interpretive phase of Betteridge's work found its most public expression in the late 1970s in two significant exhibitions: "Métiers d’art/3", which traveled to Canadian Cultural Centers throughout Europe in 1978-1979, and "Reflections in Gold and Silver", a major cross-Canada exhibition occasioned by her receiving the 1978 Saidye Bronfman award.

Honey Pot and Stirrer, 1976, is an exemplar of this phase.

The vessel combines features of both a wasp nest and a honeycomb, natural forms that Betteridge studied in detail as part of her design process.

A tiny, chased and repousséed bee in the recessed lid, and a golden quartz cabochon set in the handle of the stirrer, make droll references to the vessel’s use.

In 1978, Betteridge became the second recipient of the annual Saidye Bronfman Award, Canada’s foremost national award for fine craft.

In the 1980s, Betteridge undertook a new series of vessels composed of spherical, columnar and conical forms, fabricated in silver sheet combined with brass, copper, plexiglass, and rubber.

The influence of Post-Modernism can be read in the juxtaposition of these formal geometric compositions with Betteridge’s characteristic wit, and in the mixing of precious metal with non-precious materials.

For example, Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, 1988, is a teapot that combines a formal, globular body with base and handle elements of acrylic, silver and brass sheet.

The exposed connections between the individual components of the teapot display the post-modernist and constructivist influences with which Betteridge experimented during this period.

In 1997, she was made a Member of the Order of Canada, the country’s highest civilian honour, bestowed for a lifetime of distinguished service to the community.

In 2010, Lois Betteridge received the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Society of North American Goldsmiths.

These three honours reflect Betteridge’s significance in Canadian arts and culture, and in North American metal arts.

Judith Nasby, Director of the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, identifies Betteridge as "without doubt Canada’s most highly honored and most influential silversmith".

Over a six-decade career, Betteridge taught and mentored several generations of Canadian metal artists, smiths, and jewellers, including First Nations sculptor Mary Anne Barkhouse, and fellow Bronfman Award winner Kye-Yeon Son.

She maintained a studio in Guelph, Ontario until shortly before her death.