Diane Thubron is the daughter of renowned art educationalist Harry Thubron, who had been the founder of the 1960s Basic Course.
College principals flocked to his short courses as students to discover his revolutionary methods. Ann Sutton met Diane Thubron when she was assisting her father at Barry Summer School. The pair became close friends, and for several years Sutton was invited to their mill house in Leeds for the holidays. Thubron was the oldest of four children, and Sutton reminisces on these times spent together as a family,
“It was touching to see the Christmas tradition of Harry and the two youngest girls shutting themselves away in a room on Christmas Eve, and emerging several hours later with a magnificently decorated cake.”
Thubron and Sutton found that they were hopeless at selling their own work, but could sell the work of the other with ease. So Sutton sold Thubron’s ground breaking silver jewellery, and Thubron sold the mohair stoles which Sutton was making at that time as a way of discovering the colour forms which occurred when the weft was tied in a resist and then dyed.
