Nicola Fisher, a woman who reinvented herself from a furniture restoration specialist to a community development organiser and women's aid charity chair, has died aged 59. She succumbed to a rare autoimmune syndrome after surviving leukaemia and lymphoma.
From Sotheby's to gilding antiques
Born in Darlington to Ray and Sheila Fisher, Nicola grew up in Surrey and North Yorkshire as her father's mechanical engineering career moved the family. After what she called an indifferent education, she attended secretarial college in Oxford. Several job changes led her to Sotheby's in Chester in the late 1980s as a personal assistant to a furniture specialist. A misunderstanding of the word 'conservation' steered her into furniture restoration rather than nature conservation.
She joined a small antique restoration firm in a converted cowshed in rural Shropshire, where she met her husband, Paul. There, she mastered gilding, developing it as a new speciality for the firm. She conserved many fine 18th-century works, including a Chippendale original, and produced new pieces in traditional styles for nearly 20 years.
Community work and Teenage Kicks festival
In 2003, Nicola shifted to community development for Shrewsbury and Atcham borough council. Her first year saw her organise the Teenage Kicks music and arts festival for young people, funded on a shoestring but immediately successful. The festival ran for nearly a decade until local government cuts ended it.
Her work with Shrewsbury's youth inspired her to earn a first-class honours degree in social science from the Open University.
Charity leadership and personal passions
From around 2007, Nicola served as a trustee of West Mercia Women's Aid for about 10 years, several as chair. She oversaw a seven-figure budget, two refuge houses, and a staff of nearly 50. She also became a talented figurative ceramic sculptor after joining a weekly pottery class, a passion illness cut short.
Nicola survived leukaemia and lymphoma but eventually died from a histiocytic disorder, a rare autoimmune syndrome where immune cells attack healthy tissue. She married shortly before her death and is survived by her brother Timothy and her husband.
