Ella and Charles Naper and the Lamorna Artists

Through their close friendships, Ella and Charles Naper helped define the Lamorna art colony in its heyday. Ella learned handicrafts at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts under Frederick Partridge, a disciple of the great arts and crafts practitioner C R Ashbee and later joined his jewelry workshop at Branscombe in south Devon. There she developed and refined her feel for art nouveau. Ella married Charles Naper, a young architect and painter. They moved to Lamorna in 1912, building Trewoofe at the head of the valley. They soon became part of the Lamorna Birch circle, making lifelong friendships with Laura and Harold Knight, Harold and Gertrude Harvey, and the lesbian painter Gluck. In the early 1920s Ella set up the Lamorna Pottery with Kate Westrup, producing beautifully modelled ceramic figures. Charles Naper was an accomplished landscape painter, best known for his studies of the geometry of cliffs and the patterns and shapes of rock formations. The enduring artistic legacy is Ella's elegant jewelry, today high regarded by connoisseurs and collectors.