Sophia St John Whitty

Sophia St John Whitty (4 November 1877 – 26 February 1924) was an Irish woodcarver, teacher, and cooperativist. Whitty was part of the Irish Celtic cultural revival and the Irish Art and Crafts movement.

Early life and education Sophia St John Whitty was born at 69 Upper Leeson Street, Dublin on 4 November 1877. Her parents were Richard Lawrence Whitty and Jane Alicia, the daughter of Hugh Palliser Hickman of Fenloe house, Newmarket-on-Fergus, County Clare. Richard Lawrence Whitty was an active freemason, who served as an assistant secretary of the Dublin Masonic orphan schools from 1876 to 1882, and worshipful master of the grand master's lodge in 1882. The stained-glass artist Catherine Amelia O’Brien was her first cousin. The Whittys lived at Hillcot, Whitechurch, County Dublin near the Dublin mountains in the 1880s, and Whitty would spend her holidays at Fenloe House with the Hickman family. Whitty attended the South Kensington School of Art to study wood carving, continuing her studies at the Dublin Metropolitan School of Art.

Artistic career Around 1902, Whitty opened a small studio at 43 Sackville Street. Whitty and her sister Dorothy gave lessons in wood carving and other crafts there. She joined Kathleen A. Scott in teaching wood carving at the parochial hall of Christ Church, Bray in 1902. She went to Bruges, Belgium to study figure carving, and after this she visited art sites and schools of carving in Austria and Italy during the summer of 1903. When a new technical school opened in Bray in 1904, Whitty was appointed wood carving teacher, one of the first in Ireland, incorporating her extant carving class into it. Assisted by Scott, the class executed carved walnut woodwork of Christ Church which was designed by Whitty. These two neo-Gothic pieces included figures carved by Whitty, including angels and St Patrick.

Later life and legacy Whitty died of heart failure after a brief illness and surgery, in Drumcondra Hospital, Dublin, on 26 February 1924. A number of the former Bray wood workers carved the organ case for Christ Church, Bray in her memory in 1924. She developed an interest in the Irish language and literature, demonstrated by an undated monograph, Sea paradises of the Irish imrama.