Frank (Fred) Partridge

1877-1942

With his shaggy hair, flannel shirt and sandals he could have walked out of a novel. He was skilled… something of a lady’s man, and fiercely, intellectually at odds with the world.

Frank Partridge was the youngest sibling of Ethel Mairet. He studied at Birmingham Municipal School of Art, and in 1901 attended classes in his hometown of Barnstaple, Devon.

In 1902 he became a member of the Guild of Handicraft and was perhaps the most talented jeweller they had ever had. He was influence by medieval and folk jewellery, and the French designer Rene Lalique. He left the guild in 1903 after a personal disagreement with founder C R Ashbee.

Partridge married May Hart, a talented enameller who also trained at Birmingham and they set up a highly successful workshop in Dean Street, Soho regularly supplying work for Liberty. Their marriage was passionate and often inharmonious, and tragically in 1917, May took her own life; Partridge was distraught.

By 1920, Partridge moved to Ditchling with his entire family including his second wife, Nellie and their daughter Joan. They took on Sundown Cottage and ran it as a tea room; he used an upstairs room to make his work. It has been suggested that much of his success as a jeweller was due to his working partnership with his first wife May; after her death his work lacked the vibrancy and lustre of the pieces they made together.

Crowford, A, 1985 C R Ashbee. Architect, Designer and Romantic Socialist. New Haven and London: Yale University Press