Joyce Helena Hayward, O.B.E., M.A.

Helena Hayward (née Martyn) was born on 18 September 1914 in Eton, the only daughter of Sir Henry Martyn, surgeon-apothecary to the royal household at Windsor. She was educated at St George's, Ascot, the Sorbonne and Heidelberg. She spoke French, German and Italian fluently and acquired a good working knowledge of Danish, Russian and Spanish. In 1939 she married John Hayward, who was to become an acknowledged expert on arms and armour and the work of renaissance and mannerist goldsmiths. He was called up for service with the Special Operations Executive on the outbreak of war and at its close was appointed a member of the Fine Arts branch of the army of occupation in Austria. From 1947-9 he served with the Control Commission in Vienna. These appointments over a period of four years gave Helena, who accompanied her husband, a superb opportunity to study in many foreign libraries and to investigate, in detail, Baroque architecture and decoration. Back in London she raised a family, taught and wrote. Her study of the eighteenth-century woodcarver Thomas Johnson, Thomas Johnson and English Rococo was published by Tiranti in 1963 and established her reputation as a furniture historian. She then edited World Furniture, which appeared in 1969, as did her Catalogue of the Drawings of John Linnell in the Victoria and Albert Museum. These were followed by the two-volume joint publication with Professor Pat Kirkham, William and John Linnell: Eighteenth-century London Furniture Makers in 1980. Helena was an inspirational teacher, as much at home lecturing to European art historians in their own language as she was teaching non-specialists at the Victoria and Albert Museum or the Attingham Summer School. She became co-director, with Helen Lowenthal, of this school in 1971 and director from 1976-85. A scholarship was endowed in her name in 1991. Helena kept in close touch with like-minded colleagues in the United States, where her son made his home. She was active in the American Friends of Attingham in New York and chairman of the Anglo-American Committee of the Georgian Group for whose members she arranged country-house tours. For six years she taught the silver and furniture courses at the Study Centre for the History of Fine and Decorative Arts founded by her friend Erica O'Donnell in 1964, and was closely involved with the Friends of Chiswick House. Helena was honorary secretary of the Furniture History Society from 1982-9; a valuable member of its Activities Committee and the Ingram Fund Panel, which awards travel grants for research into furniture history and to which donations in her memory may be made. Helena and John Hayward enjoyed a happy marriage and the comfort of many friendships. Shortly after his death only a few weeks after his election to the Antiquaries in 1983, Helena rented a villa in Italy and invited their closest friends to join her there for a nostalgic, art-history holiday, an event which was to be repeated many times. Fittingly, colleagues and friends reciprocated with a lavish party at Cliveden to celebrate her 80th birthday. She died on 17 February 1997.