Susanne Vilhelmine Gether

Susanne Vilhelmine Gether (1857–1943) was a Danish–New Zealand woodcarver associated with The Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW and the role of women. She left Denmark with Kate Busck and arrived in New Zealand in 1890 and founded a studio for woodcarving in Dunedin. She became a citizen and then left for Sydney where she taught carving and weaving and helped found the society. She left in 1911 with May Barron and died back in Denmark.

Life Gether was born in Nexø She believed that gentle women needed to engage with a more useful activity than just calling on each other and wearing nice clothes. Woodcarving was, she said, "a proper pastime for the highest lady in the land".

In 1906 The Society of Arts and Crafts of NSW was founded by six practicing craftspeople in the Sydney suburb of Mosman. Gether joined and, by the December, meetings were being held in Gether's studio. In 1907 the high profile Australian Exhibition of Women's Work took place in Melbourne which had been organised by the Governor General's wife, Lady Northcote. The other artists associated with the Women's Work exhibition included Muriel Mary Sutherland Binney, Portia Geach, Eirene Mort, Dora Serle, Ida Rentoul Outhwaite and Agnes Goodsir.

Gether resigned from the NSW arts and crafts society when she discovered that lots of new members were people interested in crafts not, as she preferred, practicing craftspeople. A campaign was launched to recapture the leadership and Gether rejoined to become vice-president in 1910. However within a few months she resigned again.

Death and legacy Gether died in Denmark in April 1943 being cared for by May Barron.