The HEMEON COLLECTION

D79/31

20th Century

Maidie Frances Adelaide Lavater was born on 15 October 1896 in Bideford, Devon. Her mother Frances Ainslie Lavater (née Donovan) was born in Albury, Australia and her father George Theodore Adams Lavater was born in Neuchattel, Switzerland. In 1916 she married Archer Baxter Forsyth, Army Lieutenant (he remarried in 1933 to Pamela Green in Winchester). In 1922 they had son Stuart Gordon Archer Forsyth in Hendon. In 1930 she married Clarence Reid Hemeon, born in Canada and raised in Ireland. He was employed in the Indian Civil Service as a judge in the central provinces. The couple lived in central India in the early 1930s, friends of Anthropologist Verrier Elwin. Around 1932 the couple had a daughter Maureen Frances Ruth Hemeon in Maharashtra, India. Followed by a son in 1934 Patrick Lynn Hemeon in Nagpur Maharashtra, India. Clarence died on 8 November 1953 in Nagpur, Maharashtra, India. In 1948 Hemeon is living in Berkshire and by 1950 living in Kensington. In 1954 Hemeon was appointed MBE with the citation “Maidie Frances Adelaide Donovan, Mrs Hemeon, of Nagpur, India. For service to United Kingdom interests.” She appeared in the will of her mother’s second husband Theophilus William Morcom-Harneis, who died in 1960. In 1970 a letter by Hemeon appeared in the Women’s Institute monthly magazine ‘Home and Country’. She wanted to acquire a collection of examples and tools for making ‘thrift’ rugs from old fabrics. When she donated the collection to the MERL in 1974 Hemeon was living at Binfield Heath, South Oxfordshire. Hemeon died on 9 March 1986 in Tunbridge Wells, Kent.

Consists of leaflets, articles, press cuttings and notes on rugs and rug making, 20th century

type: ARC

English

file

Rug making, Rugs, Archives

Available