... whether there are any female frame builders?

[speedsixdave]

While replying to a post about Raleigh frame builders, I wrote something about frames being built by a man with a name. This set me wondering whether anyone knows of any female frame builders, past or present? Is frame-building an entirely male profession?

Edit - Isla Rowntree. Any others?

[jags]

great question funny i've never given it a thought.

[CREPELLO]

Just as it's all too easy to overlook who cooked the supper tonight.

I bet there were plenty of women frame builders in the war.

[xcalibur]

It's a question I'm sure has been asked for any type of profession and achievment, like "Why have there been no great women artists". So far they haven't managed to come up with anything close to to Rubens or Rembrant. There have been loads of famous women artists, often daughters of accomplished fathers. It oddly parallels most areas regarding the subject. Women very eary rode bicycles (who could resist trying?) but how many actually designed and contributed to the development I imagine will be few. I'm sure there has to be something in connection with the ladie's frame? Ideas very often come when we talk, work and think about it, and we inspire each other. Hard to give all the credit to just one person almost what ever it is too. Neither of us live in a vacuum and neither do men as a group, women are always a part of it.

[mrjemm]

I can't think of their names, but there's a lady in Oz who blogs about her frame building, IIRC. And in the US there's a cycle shop that specialises in women's specific cycle gear that was started by a lady who'd been an engineer and couldn't find a suitable bike, so made her own, then just carried on.

Sorry to be so vague. Can't recall and more detail just at the mo.

[Pickers]

Isla Rowntree - of Islabikes fame?

[mrjemm]

http://www.littlefishbicycles.com/

http://georgenaterry.com/

Them the ones I meant.

[pedalsheep]

I've just spent a good half hour browsing that Georgena Terry website! Well worth a look. Thanks mrjemm.

[mrjemm]

I've just spent a good half hour browsing that Georgena Terry website! Well worth a look. Thanks mrjemm.

Definitely an interesting site. Lots to read.

[pete75]

Pat Hanlon had a north London bike shop and produced her own frames.


From a Daily Fail article on Alan Sugar. He even mentions her in his autobiography.

"As we draw side by side, we chat about how, when he was growing up in Hackney, East London, in the early Sixties, he used to get bits of old bikes from Pat Hanlon, a legendary woman bikeframe maker on Tottenham High Road"


http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/artic ... tone-.html

[Ayesha]

It's a question I'm sure has been asked for any type of profession and achievment, like "Why have there been no great women artists". So far they haven't managed to come up with anything close to to Rubens or Rembrant. There have been loads of famous women artists, often daughters of accomplished fathers. It oddly parallels most areas regarding the subject. Women very eary rode bicycles (who could resist trying?) but how many actually designed and contributed to the development I imagine will be few. I'm sure there has to be something in connection with the ladie's frame? Ideas very often come when we talk, work and think about it, and we inspire each other. Hard to give all the credit to just one person almost what ever it is too. Neither of us live in a vacuum and neither do men as a group, women are always a part of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzKz3RuZXU0

[xcalibur]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzKz3RuZXU0

How amazing to see that! I wonder how we will remember her in 50 years or so, in theory she should be at the hight of her careere at that age. I don't doubt there are any lack of talent or gifts among women, but their position in history books is a different thing. Art history was pretty much written ages ago, and with the growing feminist views the story has stayed much the same, but with an added section on female artist at the end. What becomes written as history is a selection of events in the past, and always (at best) slightly distorted. For the individual it has a lot to do with social posistion, who you know and where you are accepted. I see her placed in a new age or christian environment, her paintings look too much like illustrations from Jehovas Witnesses' "Watchtower".

[breakwellmz]

It's a question I'm sure has been asked for any type of profession and achievment, like "Why have there been no great women artists". So far they haven't managed to come up with anything close to to Rubens or Rembrant. There have been loads of famous women artists, often daughters of accomplished fathers. It oddly parallels most areas regarding the subject. Women very eary rode bicycles (who could resist trying?) but how many actually designed and contributed to the development I imagine will be few. I'm sure there has to be something in connection with the ladie's frame? Ideas very often come when we talk, work and think about it, and we inspire each other. Hard to give all the credit to just one person almost what ever it is too. Neither of us live in a vacuum and neither do men as a group, women are always a part of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzKz3RuZXU0

Wow!
She builds bike frames as well.?

[Mistik-ka]

"Why have there been no great women artists". So far they haven't managed to come up with anything close to to Rubens or Rembrant.

Um, Georgia O'Keeffe, Frida Kahlo, Rosa Bonheur, Mary Pratt (Canadian , so probably not well known off this continent), Saskatchewan's Dorothy Knowles (yes, by international standards a bit obscure, but it's minus 23º outside my window this morning making art more immediately of interest than bicycles). … Or click here: http://www.wendy.com/women/artists.html

[pete75]

"Why have there been no great women artists". So far they haven't managed to come up with anything close to to Rubens or Rembrant.

Well there's Tracey Emin - ok I take your point