…said @archangelglass on Instagram when she saw my stained glass suffragette that was sent to the USA for @korinaoswald’s… 2025 community project for the American Glass Guild’s annual conference. 

Korina is building the pieces into a big snake called Earl, and it will be on view in the @mesaartscenter in Arizona from 9th May to 3rd August this year. Over 100 glass artists from around the world sent in copper foiled glass pieces using the template that Korina sent out. 

The brief was simple; use your own design, leave the edges raw as they will be leaded during assembly, and make sure it fits the template.

I drew a suffragette with a big hat and the suffragette colours as a background; purple for dignity, white for purity and green for hope. These colours were used in particular by the Women’s Social and Political Union (WSPU) and can be seen on lots of suffragette imagery.

It’s hard to imagine that 100 years ago most women were not allowed to vote in the UK. But it wasn’t just women; prior to the Representation of the People Act 1918, only 58% of the male population could vote. This is because you had to be resident in the country for 12 months before the general election, so many soldiers were ineligible.

But it wasn’t until 1928 that women were finally given the same voting rights as men when the Equal Franchise Act 1928 was enacted. The UK was a little late to the party; Hawaii had universal suffrage in 1840 (although this was reversed in 1852), New Zealand granted women the right to vote in 1893, and the colony of South Australia in 1895. It wasn’t the last either, women gained the same voting rights as men in France in 1944, Greece in 1952 and Lichtenstein in 1984. The Vatican City is still an exclusively male conclave composed of male cardinals – other Vatican citizens are not allowed to vote. So there is still work to do.

Want to find out more about suffragettes around the world? Why not read about my portrait of the Dutch suffragette Martina Kramers?