Born: 21 May 1870, Ireland
Died: 1966
Country most active: Ireland
Also known as: Everina Maxwell
This biography is republished from The Dictionary of Irish Biography and was written by Lawrence William White. Shared by permission in line with Creative Commons ‘Attribution’ (CC BY) licencing.
Sinclair, Everina Mary Caroline (1870–1966), craftswoman and teacher, was born 21 May 1870 in a private maternity home at 111 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin, second child among one son and two daughters of James Montgomery Sinclair (1841–99), gentleman landowner, of Bonnyglen, Inver, Co. Donegal, who became a JP and high sheriff of Co. Donegal (1899), and his wife Mary Everina, youngest daughter of Lt.-col. Hugh Barton, 2nd Life Guards, of the Waterfoot, Co. Fermanagh. The family, who had acquired Bonnyglen in 1848, were also based, from the mid seventeenth century, at Holyhill, Strabane, Co. Tyrone.
While residing at Bonnyglen throughout the 1890s, Sinclair flourished as an accomplished woodcarver and woodworking teacher. She won a prize at the 1890 show of the Royal Dublin Society for a folding chair, and also exhibited a study in pine of a grotesque animal head, described as ‘a vigorous and robust work’, evident of ‘a very competent hand’ (Larmour, 32). Students at her three woodcarving classes in Bonnyglen, Dunkineely, and Donegal town, exhibited regularly throughout the decade at the RDS. Samples of their handiwork are depicted in surviving photographs (c.1900) of students holding their carved panels, and of arranged displays of work. Sinclair herself posed for a photograph (September 1900) seated inside a large wooden frame carved with Celtic zoomorphic interlace. In executing boxes, screens, chairs, wall cabinets, bellows, picture frames, and plaques, her students worked to her designs in various styles, including Celtic ornamental knotwork, Gothic foliage, renaissance strapwork, and Moorish stylised floral patterning.
She compiled a large collection of photographs of historic examples of carved wood and stone to serve as models, either in direct adaptations of patterns and arrangements, or as inspiration for original designs, relying largely on Spanish prototypes for both her Moorish and renaissance patterns. A folding card table depicted in a surviving photograph was decorated with carved Celtic knotwork panels that were derived from St Dymphna’s crosier, the leather satchel for the shrine of St Mogue, and the Ardagh brooch. She designed a silver pendant derived from the cross on the sixteenth-century MacSweeney (MacSwyne) stone tomb at Doe castle, Co. Donegal, consisting of an interlaced centrepiece with radiating spearheads. Carvings from her Donegal classes were included in the large selection of Irish work in various media shown at the several Lancaster arts and crafts exhibitions, inaugurated by Lady Bective in 1897. Sinclair was prominent among the amateur woodworkers and teachers, largely of gentry backgrounds, who introduced the arts-and-crafts movement to Ireland, and developed a native, Celtic style. She married (1900) C. D. L. Maxwell, and had children. Thereafter she seems to have ceased teaching and exhibiting. She died in 1966.
Her father died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound under tragic, but indeterminate, circumstances at Bonnyglen (August 1899). Her brother, William Hugh Montgomery Sinclair (1868–1930), was called to the Irish bar (1897), and joined the consular service (1900). His widow, the American heiress Elizabeth Elliott Hayes, whom he married in 1924, resided at Holyhill until her death in 1957. The lands at Bonnyglen were sold to tenants under the 1903 land act, and the house was burned in the 1920s.