Ella Naper

Ella Louise Naper ( Champion; 9 February 1886 – 1972) was an English jeweller, potter, designer and painter.

Biography Naper was born in Charlton, one of the nine children of Alfred Champion, a fireman, and Mary Ann Champion. She attended the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts from 1904 to 1906. There, under the jeweller Frederick James Partridge, she learned a wide range of techniques for working in metal, wood, and enamel. She was heavily influenced by Art Nouveau design and the work of C. R. Ashbee. The couple spent two years in Looe, Cornwall, before making their permanent home at Trewoofe in Lamorna. The couple became active members of the artists colony known as the Newlyn School.

Ella Naper worked from home producing decorative enamel and horn work jewellery. She sold much of her work through events such as Arts and Crafts Exhibition, Woman's Art Exhibition, Liberty's in London and, after 1924, Newlyn Art Gallery craft exhibitions. During the First World War, Ella Naper and Laura Knight collaborated on the design of several pieces of painted jewellery and enamel plaques, including Two Dancers (1912). In 1915, Naper and Knight exhibited several of these pieces in a joint exhibition, with Lamorna Birch, held at the London Fine Art Society. Naper received commissions for mayoral chains and war memorials, including one in Exeter Cathedral and also designed the memorial to the artist Benjamin Leader in St Buryan's Church. Naper features in several works by Laura Knight, and is the model Knight is seen painting in Self Portrait with Nude (1913).