We're delighted to welcome back Arts & Crafts expert, art historian and curator Kirsty Hartsiotis for a new series of Friday morning talks. If you'd like to attend all three, this Early Bird offer is for you!
Friday 7 February, 10.30am: Wee Folk, Good Folk: Fairies and Folk Tales in Victorian and Edwardian Art
Discover the great age of fairy and folklore painting and illustration in Victorian and Edwardian art. The Victorians and Edwardians loved fairy tales and were rediscovering the folklore of the places around them. It was the great age of fairy and legendary painting, but also of gift books and illustration. We'll explore the work of artists from Richard Dadd's dark fantasies to Walter Crane's bright toy books and into the riches of the Edwardian age with illustrators such as Arthur Rackham, Edmund Dulac and many more - as well as looking into the psychology of why fairy tales became so important in this modern age.
Friday 7 March, 10.30am: Women designers of the Arts and Crafts Movement in the Cotswolds
The Arts and Crafts Movement was one of the first art movements to recognise the artistry and skills of women artists and designers. In the Cotswolds, women designers worked as hard as men – but they are still today not as well-known as their male counterparts. Artists like Georgie Gaskin, Louise Powell and Edith Payne all stand in the shadow of their male relations, and you might not have heard of designers such as Margaret Rope and Kate Bunce. By the 1920s and 30s this was changing, with figures like Barron and Larcher having a huge impact on craft in the area. This talk seeks to put right this situation, exploring embroidery, ceramics, metalwork, stained glass, bookbinding and other ‘suitable’ (or not) crafts, and look at the perceptions of female designers and makers at the time they were producing in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Friday 11 April, 10.30am: Exquisite Embroideries to Glittering Glass: the Work of Women Artists in Cotswold Churches
Women’s work has always been in our churches, but never more so than in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. Sometimes we don’t know their names – but they’ve executed countless banners, vestments, and altar frontals as part of their work for their local churches. It’s definitely not only church flowers and kneelers, though! The growing emancipation of women in the latter part of the 19th century allowed them to set up in business, going into areas that men thought they couldn’t – stained glass, wood carving, metalwork. After the First and Second World Wars, women produced intricate calligraphy for rolls of honour, carved memorials and created memorial windows. We’ll discover work by women such as Theo Moorman, Veronica Whall, Mary Lowndes, Nora Yoxall and Nan Reid, among many unsung women whose work enriches our churches right up the present day.
Early Bird Ticket £12. Tickets for individual talks will cost £7 / £5, tea/coffee included.
Booking required. Book online soon or call 01453 763394.
