My friend Elaine Short, who has died aged 89, was an artist, potter, teacher and Francophile. She was also a skilled and talented weaver. When I met her in the 1990s she showed me some of her beautiful tapestries, many of them inspired by the Sussex countryside. Her work was exhibited in galleries including Hastings Art Forum, where she was an active member, and her tapestry techniques were much admired.
Born in Nice, France, to Alice (nee Bousseaux) and John Braithwaite, a British army officer, who after the second world war worked as a company secretary, Elaine went to St Joseph’s Catholic school in south London. The family had moved to the UK at the outbreak of the war.
Hastings Woods, a woven piece by Elaine Short
After leaving school she worked at the Bon Marché department store in Brixton and then as a librarian in Lambeth. Elaine later became a primary school teacher. She married Gustave Simonon, whose Belgian father had come to Britain as a refugee during the first world war, when she was 19. They had two sons, Paul, who became a member of the Clash, and Nicholas, also a musician, but later divorced.
Elaine met the writer, composer and musicologist Michael Short in the mid-1960s. In 1966 the couple spent a year in Italy, where Michael took up a musical scholarship. They married in 1974. With Michael she found many opportunities to express her creativity and love of the French language and the couple enjoyed trips to Europe, particularly France. As enthusiastic members of the Anglo-French Society in Hastings, they gave occasional presentations in the language they both loved.
In 1990 Elaine edited Michael’s biography Gustav Holst: The Man and His Music; in 2013 the couple published Utter Nonsense in Hastings: Edward Lear, Lewis Carroll, and All That Jazz!, with Elaine’s illustrations.
The couple loved drawing and painting. Every Thursday, whatever the weather, they would set out to sketch local views to use as material for weaving and painting. They lived in various locations in the west and south of England, including Bradford-on-Avon, Hastings, Rye and finally St Leonards-on-Sea, where they each had a garden studio with views towards Beachy Head. To celebrate Elaine’s 75th birthday Michael organised a retrospective exhibition of her work at the Hastings Art Forum.
In her final years Elaine moved into residential care. Michael died in 2023.
Elaine is survived by Paul and Nicholas, a stepdaughter, Lydia, and three grandchildren, Louis, Claude and Charlotte.
