Back to Peasants

Dominion, Volume 30, Issue 265, 5 August 1937, Page 5

Back to Peasants

British Woman Heads Wide Movement in Jugoslavia

MISS ANNIE J. DICKINSON, the 70-year-old sister of Lord Dickinson of Painswick, England, has become first vice-president of the new women’s section of the Jugoslav Health Cooperatives, an official body supported by the Ministry of Commerce at Belgrade. She is to assist in the organising of a “back to peasant art” movement in Jugoslavia, and her Belgrade school of carpentry, where scores of Jugoslav boys have been trained in the production of native furniture with all-native materials, is now the centre of what is intended to bo a national organisation.

“We hope to have schools throughout the country to develop carpentry on the lines which I have been following in Belgrade and in Travnik, Bosnia, where I first founded my school for boys after the war.” said Miss Dickinson.

Queen Maria and Prince Paul, Regent of Jugoslavia, have been among Miss Dickinson’s customers for furniture made at her school.

“At the same time, women ■will be encouraged in the art of weaving and needlework, at which the Jugoslav woman Is especially expert. Our movement will penetrate to the distant villages, and Is aimed to preserve and improve the peasant arts which modern mass products are tending to destroy. Later I hope we shall organise the sale of our Jugoslav peasant products on an international scale.”