Dorothy Johnson’s papier mâché model of Beatrix Potter
In honour of Beatrix Potter’s 159th birthday on Monday 28th July, this month’s object is this papier mâché doll by local resident Dorothy Johnson.
Helen Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) was born in London to Rupert and Helen Potter (nee Leech). Both sides of her family were originally from Lancashire and became very wealthy from the cotton industry. Her paternal grandfather Edmund Potter owned the largest calico printing works in England and later served as the Member of Parliament for Carlisle.
Beatrix had a privileged by lonely childhood, mostly spent in the nursery of her family home at 2 Bolton Gardens, Kensington. She honed her artistic talents and knowledge of natural history on family holidays in Scotland and the Lake District.
As a young woman in the 1890s, Beatrix became fascinated by fungi. Under the mentorship of amateur mycologist Charles McIntosh, she began drawing and researching mushrooms and lichen, developing a theory on how fungi reproduced. With the help of her uncle Sir Henry Roscoe, Beatrix consulted with experts at Kew Gardens regarding her theory of hybridisation.
Despite being rebuffed by the director at Kew, William Thistleton-Dyer, Beatrix presented a paper on her findings to the Linnean Society in 1897, with the assistance of mycologist George Massee. She withdrew her paper when she realised some of her samples were contaminated, and its whereabouts are currently unknown. She continued to draw and paint fungi until 1901, and the Linnean Society issued a posthumous apology to Potter for the sexism displayed in its handling of her research in 1997.
Best known for her children’s stories including The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902), Beatrix Potter has become an integral figure in Cumbrian conservation. She began buying farms and land in the Lake District when she purchased Hill Top Farm near Hawkshead in 1905. She then donated her 14 farms and 8,000 acres of land to the National Trust after her death in 1943.
This doll of Beatrix was made by Dorothy Johnson in 2001, showing her as the Lake District farmer she became in later life. Johnson apparently made this doll as a prototype for a collection she planned to sell, but decided it was too time-consuming. The Beatrix doll wears her signature Herdwick tweed suit with a sun hat and carries a walking stick.
Learn more about Beatrix Potter’s fungi watercolours in this year’s exhibition, The Armitt Explores… Beatrix Potter.
Sources:
- The Armitt Collection
- Beatrix Potter – Undiscovered mycologist?
- The Beatrix Potter Society
- The National Trust – Beatrix Potter