Emily Margaret Wood



Emily Margaret Wood (1865 – 1907) was an English botany teacher and painter of scientific illustrations and Arts and Crafts ceramics.

Life
Born 23 August 1865 in Calcutta, India, she moved to England in 1871. In 1903 she was working as a botany teacher at the Liscard School of Science and Art.

Botany
Serving as secretary and botanical referee of the Liverpool Naturalists' Field Club for twenty years, her botanical contributions included collecting and publishing on plants of Denbighshire, illustrating Green’s Flora of the Liverpool District, revising George Atkinson’s First Studies of Plant Life for a British audience, and making over 800 plant drawings. She also led botanical expeditions and gave free lectures at Liverpool's Free Public Library.

Ceramics
From the late 1890s she was commissioned as a ceramics painter by Sir William Forwood for the Della Robbia Pottery, part of the Arts and Crafts movement's reaction against mass-production. She painted Art Nouveau-influenced vases and tiles with botanical and classical scenes, including executing a design by Ford Madox Brown, and also worked as a book-keeper for the project.