Artist Info
Ann Bristow
Ann Bristow was born into a family with a long textile history. She went to Howell's School at Denbigh, where she was taught by Ella McLeod, who channelled her career into her then stated interests in weaving and spinning. From there, she went to Bradford Technical College where she had a good grounding in textiles, with an emphasis in designing for industry, very different to the world of craft weaving. In the early 1950s, she set up a weaving workshop in Ambleside, in the Lake District, in close company with the painters, Claude and Audrey Harrison and the potter George Cooke. She married David Bristow in 1956 and moved to London where, with three other weavers, including Eileen Ellis, she set up Weaveplan, a design and consultancy company, with a special interest in designing ranges for industrial production. At this time she started teaching weaving at CSAD, where the head of weaving was Marianne Straub. In 1975, she moved with her husband to Kenya, where she set up and ran Elmenteita Weavers Ltd. This would provide a vehicle for her own creative talents, and later on for local weavers to exercise their own designs, in the process generating employment and teaching new skills to a large number of Africans. The company continued after her death in 2008 under Ann Bristow's African partner, Margaret Mutiso.
