Susan Williams-Ellis, 89, the eccentric designer of Botanic Garden, the popular tableware pattern featuring botanical illustrations complete with insects, died Nov. 27 in Portmeirion village in northern Wales.
Botanic Garden, introduced in 1972, has sold more than 40 million pieces worldwide, according to the tableware’s manufacturer, the Portmeirion Group.
Williams-Ellis was born June 6, 1918, to Amabel Strachey, a writer, and Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, an aristocratic, mostly self-taught architect who assembled Portmeirion village from dilapidated structures and built others, painting many of them intense colors like fuchsia and turquoise. The village was the setting of the 1960s television series “The Prisoner.”
Her parents were members of the Bloomsbury group. Author Rudyard Kipling was her godfather, and Noel Coward wrote the play “Blithe Spirit” at Portmeirion.
Williams-Ellis studied surface pattern design and shape design under potter Bernard Leach and sculptor Henry Moore, among others.
In 1945, she married Euan Cooper-Willis, an economist. At Portmeirion the couple raised pigs and vegetables and four children.
Williams-Ellis was a freelance designer of pottery, tiles and textiles and also selected souvenirs for Portmeirion’s gift shop. In 1953, her father asked her to design some exclusive items for the shop. She bought pottery and had it decorated at a local company, then bought the pottery company and hired the decorators, naming the business Portmeirion Potteries.
What started out as an eccentric project became a big business with Botanic Garden.
Bill Strauss, 60, who founded the political-satire group Capitol Steps, died Tuesday of pancreatic cancer at his home in McLean, Va., the musical troupe announced.
Strauss, a Harvard-trained lawyer and Senate subcommittee staffer, got the idea of forming Capitol Steps in 1981 after hosting a party that ended with a jam session around the piano in which partygoers riffed on parodies of Reagan-era newsmakers. Months later, the group made its debut at the office Christmas party of Strauss’ employer, Sen. Charles Percy, R-Ill.
Capitol Steps initially consisted of Senate staffers who set out to satirize the people and places that employed them. They regularly performed for free at parties and in church basements.
Today, Capitol Steps is a $3 million-a-year industry with more than 40 employees who sing and satirize at venues nationwide. The group has made 27 albums.
