Today, March 8 is International Womens’ Day. What better way to honor the day than to celebrate our co-founder Primm ffrench, our mom and grandma. She would have turned 95 on March 9, 2024 - Let's celebrate her birth, can-do outlook and the self reliant, woman who inspired us and so many others to be more like her.
We're spreading Primm's gifts around by offering 25% off the products in our shop that she designed - read to the bottom for details.
Primm taught high-school art for over 40 years throughout her career and helped hundreds of students find worth in their dreams of becoming creative professionals, (myself included). She actually filled out my college application - truth!
Primm was born in Richmond Virginia in 1929 to James Albert Turner and Doris Jane Bryant Turner. Her dad was born in the rural Virginia hills of Wythe County. Primm’s mom was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa, was college educated, an accomplished concert pianist and she taught piano from her livingroom.
Due to her dad’s career, selling sheetrock, the newest, coolest building material of the time, to the building industry; the family moved a lot. Primm attended a different school every year growing up.
Because of all her moving around and her academic aptitude, Primm managed to graduate high school at the tender age of 16.
She went right on to The University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, VA where she became life-long friends with her three roommates, Betsy, Connie, and Nora.
FUN FACT:
Betsy, Connie, Nora and Primm stayed in close touch throughout their long lives gathering annually for weeklong rendezvous after retirement. With their husbands in tow, they partied it up, cooked together and laughed their asses off reminiscing about days gone by. Those southern accents would come into full bloom aided by the company and cocktails.
Stories were shared about that first job, how the ‘lunchroom’ was actually the bench-lined halls where she could not sit because the law said that if she, as a white person, sat on a bench, all the black people on that shared bench, had to stand.
She brought in a chair to keep the comfort.
At Christmas-time we bake the most DELICIOUS Gingerbread Cookies from a recipe given to Primm aka Miss Turner, from one of her students at that first teaching job,… a boy named Dickie Vass. I think the recipe makes 10 dozen!
After her experience teaching in the segregated south, Primm embarked on a summer program in Florence Italy to further her Art History education and see the world. She made the journey on a freighter that took ten days to cross the Atlantic.
It was in Florence where she met her future husband, John ffrench and a whole slew artists who turned out to be additions to her collection of life-long friends. She learned to speak Italian and returned to Florence for longer stints in the following years. Her community of friends there lived at a place called Villa Fabbricotti. Each room was home to an artist from diverse backgrounds around the world. My dad took me there when I was traveling on business with him in 1995. It was remarkably similar to what he had in his memory… Lovely, airy, balconies on an open courtyard, quiet, when we were there in the middle of the day, but signs of continued art making were evident.
Wild stories of adventures in Florence, other parts of Italy and travels around Europe filled our childhood. Primm's foxy race-car-driving boyfriend, hitch hiiking to Switzerland with her girlfriend, and diving into mosaic-making, developing her notable painting style, collaborating with her housemates and the recognition that comes with commitment to ones art...
She showed us the way by experience, traveling solo without fear, stories of the lovely people she met on the way and how the collection of 'aunts' and 'uncles' we were brought up knowing, fit into her history, and became part of ours.
Somewhere along the line, Primm’s parents retired to Stockbridge MA to take advantage of the culturally rich environs of The Berkshires. Doris’ attention was focused on Tanglewood, the summer home of The Boston Symphony Orchestra where she spent summers ushering and taking in the gloriousness of setting and music she loved so.
Primm joined her parents in Stockbridge and was hired to teach high school art at Williams High School right in town. She taught there for two years, 1961-1963 before marrying John in the summer of 1963, and settling in Ireland where he led a notable design team at Arklow Pottery in Co. Wicklow.
My sisters, Felicitas and Sofia, and I were all born in Ireland. Primm maintained her connection to Stockbridge and her Berkshire community with a regular column about her life in Ireland as a newly-wed, new mom, and then mom of three, in The Berkshire Eagle.
In 1968, she jumped at the job offer she got from the new Berkshire Hills Regional School District to run the 6-school art department. Her with the only concession being that the district hire her husband, to teach in the Art Department, as part of the deal. John ffrench, Irish ceramist and lead designer at Arklow Pottery, was a welcome addition to the soon to be Monument Mountain Regional High School art department.
Primm and John spent the rest of their working lives teaching in that district. My sisters and I all had them for teachers when we took art in high school.
If you haven't figured it out by now, Primm was John's 'boss'. I remember people asking me as a kid about that and wondering why. She was humble, organized and articulate, focused on providing excellent art education and showing, by example, that women are limitless and have what it takes to do anything they want.
Primm headed up the Art Dept, designing curriculum, teaching classes, going to meetings, and supporting all of her students, adding many of them to that growing list of lifelong friends. She expertly hand-cut all the stencils used to make our calendars before we switched to our current photo emulsion process. She ran the business aspect of The Dolphin Studio with her Dome Book full of all the numbers that all balanced perfectly. She designed and mailed our pre-internet marketing mailers, and shipped orders all while parenting 3 daughters born in three years. She encouraged her kids' creative endeavors and supported her husband's commitment to his art-making while relinguishing, without resentment, her own art practice for lack of time. Often thought to be 'quiet' or 'shy', she was not. She was married to a gregarious man who loved people, told stories, garnered the attention in a room. Primm's eyes twinkled with mischief and good humor that on occasion was matched with a hearty, full-belly laugh and an unmatched warmth.
The Dolphin Studio would certainly not be here today without the groundwork laid by Primm. I wouldn't have EVER gotten that college application done! Things in Stockbridge Massachusetts and in the lives of so many artists would just be a whole lot different without Primm's steadfast creative encouragement. So today, we honor, and give huge thanks for the long legacy to Primm Turner ffrench. We miss you and will toast the day to all the gifts you have left for us.
We're spreading Primm's gifts around by offering 25% off the products in our shop that she designed - through midnight March 10, 2024.
To get your 25% off enter PRIMMS DAY at checkout - Don't miss out! The sale ends at midnight Sunday March 10, 2024
Dorothy Naylor
March 10, 2024
What a beautiful tribute to a remarkable woman, teacher and mentor. I was in Primm and John’s classes and they were a highlight of my HS experience.
My recent joy was to take out the many Christmas cards I received over the years from Primm and John and decorate my home for Xmas. It’s an annual ritual as well as continuing to display the ffrench calendar.
Thank you for telling her story and putting some unknown pieces of her extraordinary life together.
Warmest wishes
Dorothy ‘72 MMRHS