Edith Grove

Edith Mary "Mollie" Grove (14 September 1909 – 23 February 1996) was an Australian weaver, textile designer, and business owner.

Life Grove was born in 1909 in Hamilton, Victoria to Methodist minister John William Grove, and Daisy Blanche (nee Galloway). Grove was first studying to become a concert pianist before taking up art, teaching art and crafts at the Elsternwick campus of MLC.

It was in England that she was reunited with Hardress who had arrived a few years earlier and was doing costume design for the Tunbridge Repertory Theatre in Kent. It was at this Northampton cottage where Grove was first persuaded to try the loom and fell in love with weaving. Upon returning to London she left the School of Arts and Crafts and enrolled instead with the Kensington Weavers. Under the tutelage of Frau Jorgens, a talented German weaver, Grove did an apprenticeship learning advanced weaving techniques. Grove was particularly interested in the industrial development of weaving in Finland and Sweden. They arrived in Melbourne on 14 August 1939 on board the Dutch ship Arendskerk, which less than a year later was sunk by a German submarine. The women quickly found an ideal location for a new studio in the basement of the Royal Exchange Assurance Building on Queen Street, with a loom for Mollie and a theatre replica for Catherine.

eclarté Their first shop was at the start of World War II displaying fabrics on urns in the store window of Batavia House. In March of 1940 an exhibition of their hand-woven fabrics at Hotel Australia was opened by Prime Minister Robert Menzies. Their displays appeared the Royal Show in Melbourne as part of the Australian Wool Board's Wool Court, with their creation being chosen by Governor Sir Winston Dugan to present as a gift to the Premier. Grove and Hardress are not only credited with the creation of beautiful fabrics but the advancement of the wool manufacturing industry in Australia. The influence of the war made imported fashion hard to come by Offering tailored suits at half the price of comparable imported products and achieving an exclusivity deal with David Jones, eclarté became known as one of the best cloths in Australia.

After working out of their Melbourne studio throughout the war years, the eclarté mills in Dandenong were opened by Robert Menzies on 18 December 1951. While many considered weaving a traditionally feminine practice, two-thirds of their factory staff were men. Grove and Hardress worked hard to make their company a joyful and nice place to work. Rather than just employing workers, the eclarte philosophy was "A man who works with his hands is a labourer, a man who works with his hands and his brain is a craftsman, but a man who works with his hands and his brain and his heart is an artist." They trained their community of artisans in all aspects of the work so they could perform a variety of tasks and not be bored.