My mother, Heather Williams, who has died aged 97, was an oboist and oboe teacher.

In her early 20s she was principal oboist with the Scottish National Orchestra in Glasgow, before moving into teaching the instrument at Bryanston school in Dorset. However, she spent most of her teaching career at Dartington College of Arts in Devon, a higher education institution focusing on music, theatre, dance and the visual arts.

In addition Heather taught the oboe privately and at the University of Exeter, and continued with her private work after retiring from Dartington in 1988.

Heather was born in Sutton Coldfield in the West Midlands to Ernest Williams, who ran Emery Brothers, a subsidiary of his family’s steel business, and his wife, Margaret (nee Harris). Wishing their daughter to have a humane, liberal education, they sent her to the progressive Dartington Hall school, where she loved the equality between children and teachers, the rich offer of arts, and riding on horseback to the school farm. She also enjoyed the piano and violin before taking up the oboe, studying there under the composer Imogen Holst, who created the first music course at Dartington Hall, and who remained a musical inspiration.

After leaving school, Heather went on to study the oboe at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, and later in Amsterdam with Haakon Stotijn, principal oboist of the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra.

In 1951, aged 23, she became a principal oboist herself, with the Scottish National Orchestra. There she met and married the clarinettist Tim Ormerod, and I was born in 1952. In 1956 she and Tim left the orchestra to take up teaching posts at Bryanston school, but when their marriage ended in divorce in 1959 Heather moved with me to teach at Dartington. In 1968 she married Bill Elmhirst, son of the founders of Dartington Hall Trust, Leonard and Dorothy Elmhirst, but that marriage also ended in divorce, in 1974.

Apart from her teaching work, Heather was committed to the Dartington Summer School of Music, to which she contributed by playing in concerts. In the early 80s she co-founded Aubade, a movable trio of oboists, designed to give her ex-students experience in ensemble playing. Over a decade they played in a range of settings, from grand houses to outdoor events.

Apart from her involvement in music, Heather was interested in design. For most of the 60s, alongside her school and college work, she was an informal voluntary assistant at Dartington to the textile artist Susan Bosence, who introduced her to tie-dying. Often during rehearsal breaks she would be discreetly tying grains of rice into cloth in preparation for Susan to dye.

In retirement Heather extended her artistic endeavours to silversmithing, displaying and selling her jewellery at craft fairs in Devon and at galleries nationally, including the Primavera in Cambridge. Her work reflected her personality through pieces that were playful, witty, understated and thoughtful, with many of her designs inspired by the natural world.

She is survived by me, a sister, Valerie, two granddaughters and three great-grandchildren.