'The Textile Collection of Elisabeth Frink'

February 2024-November 2026

February 2024-November 2026
Dame Elisabeth Frink RA
(1930-1993)

Dame Elisabeth Frink was greatly affected by her up bringing during the Second World War and the military family she came from. Her work examines the strength and vulnerability of the male form. She was fascinated by birds and often depicted them. Using wire frames, Frink would build up her sculptures with plaster before casting them in bronze. In her lifetime she created 403 sculptures. As well as sculptures Frink drew, painted and designed in other mediums.

Her art career started at Guildford Art School before she went on to Chelsea School of Art. Upon graduating in 1952, her first exhibition was entitled 'Humans and Other Animals'. Through the 1950s and 1960s, she taught at the Chelsea School of Art and St Martin's School of Art in London, alongside her blossoming art career. Whilst living and working in France in the late 1960s that she first started to experiment with her so-called 'Goggle Head' statues, partly inspired by the glasses worn by General Oufkir and to examine oppressive regimes. Upon returning to the UK, she moved to Dorset in 1976 and the following year she was elected as a Royal Academician. In 1982 she was awarded a DBE and continued to exhibit her work and take on large scale sculpture commissions including The Walking Madonna in 1981 which stands outside Salsbury Cathedral. Her final work, The Welcoming Christ, for Liverpool Cathedral was unveiled a few days before her death from cancer in 1993. Many of her sculptures are on display in museums, galleries, towns, cities and religious buildings across Britain and the world.

Photographs and ephemera are available to study at Dorset History Centre. The Museum of Dorset holds the Elisabeth Frink collection.

The textiles on display are from the Frink Archive at The Blandford Fashion Museum, provided to The Blandford Fashion Museum in accordance with the wishes of the artist's late son, Lin Jammet.