The Three Prat Sisters, Annie, Minnie and May

Bookbinding, Watercolours, and Wildflowers – The Creative Legacy of the Prat Sisters

The three Prat sisters of Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Annie, Minnie, and May, grew up in a household surrounded by art and ideas. Their home was filled with photographs, letters, poetry, and drawings by family, friends, and relatives, among them the poet Bliss Carman and the artist William Hind. It was a world alive with creativity, and the sisters carried that spirit into their own remarkable careers.

The sisters also came of age at a fortunate time. In the early 1800s, education for girls in Canada had been limited and informal, but by the latter half of the century more opportunities were opening. Mount Allison University in New Brunswick admitted women as early as 1862, and attitudes toward women working outside the home were beginning to shift. At the same time, the Arts and Crafts Movement, most active in the 1890s through the First World War, encouraged beauty in everyday objects and valued fine craftsmanship over mass production. These changes shaped the artistic paths of Annie, Minnie, and May Prat.

In 1896, Annie Prat, then 35, left for the Art Institute of Chicago to study painting. A year later her sister Minnie, 29, moved to New York to train in artistic bookbinding at the Elephant Bindery under Evelyn Nordhoff. Soon after, May Rosina, 25, joined her, specializing in decorative leatherwork. By 1900, Minnie and May had opened the Primrose Bindery in New York, producing fine bookbindings and leatherwork.

The sisters returned to Nova Scotia as often as they could, but tragedy struck in 1901 when Minnie fell ill with typhoid during a visit home and died. Three years later, May Rosina closed the Primrose Bindery and returned permanently to Nova Scotia, where she married and continued her bookbinding on a smaller scale. Annie, too, came back to the province, devoting herself to painting miniatures and wildflowers. Before her death in 1960 at the age of 99, Annie Prat donated more than 200 watercolours to the Public Archives of Nova Scotia, ensuring that the sisters’ artistic legacy would endure.