ACMS Events - 2017
The following lectures were presented during 2017
Anne Anderson – Rene Lalique – Master of Art Nouveau Jewellery 27 January 2017
Fiona Rose – Retelling the Tale of Taylor: A New Look at the Life of Warrington Taylor 28 February 2017
Matthew Williams – The Marquesses of Bute; Patrons of Opulence 28 March 2017
Sarah Sullivan – Messrs Underwood of Dunsfold: Lutyens’ favourite Builders 19 September 2017
Alec Hamilton – The Arts and Crafts church – does it exist? 24 October 2017
Michael Page – A Less than Heavenly Match: Augustus Pugin and Viscount Midleton 28 November 2017
The following visits and events were held during 2017
A visit to High Wall, Headington, Oxford 11 May 2017
It’s Summertime at Goddards, Abinger Common 13 June 2017
Annual General Meeting at Onslow Village Hall 20 June 2017
A visit to the Wildernesse Estate at Sevenoaks 11 July 2017
Norfolk Tour: From Norwich to the North Coast 25 to 28 September 2017
Christmas Lunch at Woodlands Park, Cobham 10 December 2017
LECTURES
Rene Lalique – Master of Art Nouveau Jewellery Anne Anderson, FSA
Friday 27st January 2017 – 7.30pm for 8:00pm
at Onslow Village Hall
Although Lalique is best known for his Art Deco glass of the inter-war years, his career began in the early 1890s as the designer of the finest Art Nouveau jewellery. Patronised by the actress Sarah Bernhardt, Lalique created stunning pieces of jewellery from gold, horn, glass and enamel. He preferred opals and aquamarines to flashy diamonds and his jewels were about style and craftsmanship rather than vulgar ostentation. As his fame spread, his style was copied and debased until Lalique felt that he had exhausted the potential of jewellery. At that very moment, around 1907, the perfumer Coty asked Lalique to design some labels for his scent bottles but Lalique went one better and designed a new stopper – he had created the first customised perfume bottle. Soon Lalique was designing for Worth and other famous perfumers. Lalique died in 1945, but his company, based at Wingen-sur-Moder, is still thriving.
Design for a pendant. c1910s. Victoria and Albert Museum
Anne Anderson is currently Associate Professor at Exeter University, a tutor at the V&A and NADFAS lecturer. Her specialist knowledge is of the Aesthetic Movement, Arts and Crafts, Art Nouveau and Modernism. Previously she taught on the Fine Arts Valuation degree at Southampton Solent University.
Retelling the Tale of Taylor: A New Look at the Life of Warrington Taylor Fiona Rose
Tuesday 28th February 2017 – 7.30pm for 8:00pm
at Onslow Village Hall
George Warrington Taylor was the Business Manager of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co from 1865 until his early death in 1870. Taylor has invariably been portrayed as a shadowy figure: a penniless theatre usher mysteriously coming into the orbit of William Morris before fleeing to Hastings with consumption in 1866 never to grace Queen Square again. Despite being depicted as managing The Firm at arm’s length from the south coast whilst tormenting Morris via the arsenal of his pen, this talk, which is based on original research, shows Taylor’s life was much more interesting and complex than hitherto presented.
Fiona Rose is the owner of Arts & Crafts Living, selling home interiors in the style of the Arts and Crafts era. Fiona is a member of ACMS and gave a lecture to the Society on Frank Lloyd Wright in 2014. She has lectured at The University of Cambridge, for the National Trust, specialist Arts and Crafts associations and for national and local charity groups.
A lecture in partnership with Watts Gallery:
The Marquesses of Bute: Patrons of Opulence Matthew Williams
Tuesday 28th March 2017 – 7.00pm for 7:30pm
at the Watts Gallery, Compton
Mount Stuart, Isle of Bute
The Marquesses of Bute are an ancient Scots family who rose to prominence during the eighteenth century. Judicious marriages brought wealth and by 1860 industrial enterprise had made them one of the richest families in the Empire. The scholarly third Marquess was a great architectural patron. His extraordinary and intensely personal buildings include two romantic Welsh castles and Mount Stuart, his own home in Scotland, once memorably described as being like a head on collision between the Taj Mahal and a Victorian railway hotel. He employed the Arts and Crafts architects William Burges, Robert Rowland Anderson, Robert Weir Schultz and John Kinross. This lecture looks at both personalities and buildings, and examines the Bute’s legacy of craftsmanship and creativity.
Matthew Williams trained as an art and architectural historian before qualifying as a museum curator. He has been Curator of Cardiff Castle in Wales for twenty seven years, where he has overseen the conservation and re-furnishing of the building, as well as publishing new research on the subject. He lectures widely to The National Trust, The British Museum, NADFAS, and is undertaking a lecture tour of the USA and Canada in 2017.
Messrs Underwood of Dunsfold: Lutyens’ favourite Builders Sarah Sullivan
Tuesday 19 September 2017 – 7.30pm for 8:00pm
at Onslow Village Hall
The AMCS Recording Group, led by Sarah Sullivan, has been researching the little known world of Lutyens’ favourite builders. An aspect of social history rarely researched, will reveal the craftsmanship in the houses Munstead Wood and Orchards; a glimpse of ‘a fine old carpenter who worked to [Lutyens’] drawings in an entirely sympathetic manner’ and allow insight into how everything in the house was specifically designed for it – ‘no random choosings from the ironmonger’s pattern book’ and ‘no moral slothfulness’ in the fittings. In Dunsfold we shall look at the legacy of Messrs Underwood, to explore Lutyens in miniature with the frequent deployment of favourite architectural details.
Inscription, Munstead Wood
Sarah Sullivan works as a historic buildings and conservation specialist. Her work has involved construction, repair, restoration, adaptation and extensions to many designated and undesignated heritage assets. She has a deep understanding of historic structures with design skill and flair in exterior and interior solutions.
The Arts and Crafts church – does it exist? Alec Hamilton
Tuesday 24 October 2017 – 7.30pm for 8:00pm
at Onslow Village Hall
The Arts and Crafts was chiefly interested the secular: houses and the home – comfort, beauty and living right. Nonetheless, there was still a demand from some quarters for new churches, and Arts and Crafts architects, often despite themselves, took the work on. The result was a number of highly idiosyncratic buildings, masterpieces of the Edwardian era, designed by architects who were pantheists, agnostics and mystics – W.R. Lethaby, Randall Wells, Edward Prior and Edgar Wood – for clients with often rather unorthodox spiritual inclinations. Alec Hamilton, author of a much-praised recent study of Charles Spooner, examines this paradox through a number of little known but aesthetically seductive British churches.
All Saints, Brockhampton by W.R. Lethaby
Born in Glasgow in 1949, Alec Hamilton read English at Oxford, and, after a career in advertising, came late to architectural history. After a BA then MA at the University of Gloucestershire, he returned to Oxford in 2009 to do a DPhil thesis on The Arts & Crafts in church-building in Britain 1884-1918 which he is currently turning into a book. He has been a Trustee of the Landmark Trust and of Friends of Friendless Churches.
A Less than Heavenly Match: Augustus Pugin and Viscount Midleton Michael Page
Tuesday 28 November 2017 – 7.30pm for 8:00pm
at Onslow Village Hall
In the 1840s the irascible and unstable 5th Viscount Midleton commissioned temperamental Catholic architect, Augustus Pugin to beautify his estates in Peper Harow, near Godalming and County Cork in Ireland. The lecture explores what they achieved together and what and why things went wrong.
Michael Page is County Archivist at Surrey History Centre, the county record office. He has been researching the stormy life of the 5th Viscount Midleton for many years.
VISITS AND EVENTS
A visit to High Wall, Headington, Oxford
11 May 2017, 12.30pm – 4.30pm
We have the opportunity, by kind permission of the owners, to visit the Grade II listed private house designed by the architect, Walter Cave (1863-1939), and set in extensive Italianate gardens by Harold Peto (1854-1933).
Cave practised architecture, as a sole practitioner, in the Arts and Crafts and Classical Revival styles. He was an active member of the Art Workers Guild for 27 years. His work was regularly exhibited at the Royal Academy and the Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society. As well as country houses with their gardens and estate buildings, his urban design included industrial buildings and concert halls.
Peto was in partnership with Ernest George from 1876 to 1892 and designed houses in Kensington and Chelsea, as well as country houses. He lived at Iford Manor from 1889 (previously visited by the society) and his garden designs include West Dean house in Sussex and Ilnacullin, Ireland.
High Wall was constructed in 1910 for Miss Katherine J. D. Feilden who lived there until the Second World War. Described by Pevsner as a ‘very handsome big house in the seventeenth century style’, it is built upon land sloping down to the west and is constructed of brick with stone dressings. The formal garden was laid out by Harold Peto in about 1912, and later work was undertaken by Percy Cane in the 1920s.
We will meet at the nearby Victoria Arms, Marston, for lunch, prior to visiting the house. The afternoon will conclude with tea and cake.
It’s Summertime at Goddards, Abinger Common
Tuesday, 13 June 2017 . 4.30pm to 8.30pm
Annual General Meeting and Lecture
at Onslow Village Hall
Wednesday, 20 June 2017 at 7.30pm
Following the AGM proceedings, there will be a lecture:
Building Limnerslease: The Watts & the Architects, Ernest George & Harold Peto Dr Desna Greenhow
A visit to the Wildernesse Estate at Sevenoaks, Kent
11 July 2017 12.30pm to 4.30pm
The Wildernesse Estate is a residential estate of some 40 hectares served by private roads which was laid out in the 1920s on the eastern side of Sevenoaks. The Estate was conceived as a composition of fine houses in an open, spacious, landscaped setting. Strict legal controls were put in place to ensure that these concepts were carried out and retained and those covenants continue to maintain high standards of design quality and spaciousness and the retention of hedges and woodlands
An event has been organised for a visit to the estate where, with the help of local residents, arrangements are being made to view five or six private houses which were designed, or in one case influenced, by H M Baillie Scott. The extent to which we will be permitted to view the interiors of the houses will be dependent on the individual owners on the day.
The event will commence at 12.30 pm with a buffet lunch at The Bucks Head, a Public House at the nearby village of Goddens Green. From the pub we will drive a short distance to the estate from where we will commence our visit. The visit will conclude with tea and cake in the garden of one of the houses.
Norfolk Tour: From Norwich to the North Coast
Monday 25 to Thursday 28 September 2017
Our tour this year is to Norfolk, travelling by car.
We stay our first night at Dunston Hall Hotel just four miles south of Norwich city centre. Set in substantial grounds and built in 1859 this Elizabethan style but modernised building will prove an interesting start to our trip.
We shall meet there at lunch time on the Monday and then venture into Norwich in the afternoon for a conducted walking tour focusing on the Arts and Crafts Movement and Art Nouveau features in the townscape, before returning to our hotel for dinner.
On the Tuesday morning we will visit The Sainsbury Centre for the Visual Arts where, having driven the 8 miles from the hotel, we will have a guided tour of the Lisa Sainsbury Ceramics Collection, a major collection of 20th century studio ceramics.
From there we drive a further 11 miles to Wicklewood to visit “Circa 1900” which specialises in the sale of Cotswold School furniture – it should be interesting. Then, onward up to the north coast and our accommodation for the next 2 nights.
We travel to Holt and then to “Voewood” which we have for our sole occupancy for Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Voewood is one of the three great butterfly-plan houses in Norfolk, the others being High Kelling which is a private home and inaccessible and Happisburgh Manor which is currently closed – though we are still working in hope of access and plan at the very least to pass by on our last day and view the winged exterior.
Voewood designed in 1903-04 by Edward Schroeder Prior is magnificent – look up the website www.voewood.com – and staying there will be a memorable pleasure, but please be advised that because of its Grade II* listing the bedrooms are not ensuite. There are adequate bathrooms and I’m told that they don’t get any complaints, but dressing gowns might be useful. On the other hand there the Grade I listed gardens, nice lounges and a billiard room for the gents …. and ladies of course !! And enjoy the artwork – there’s very little free wall-space.
The next day the plan is we go to Overstrand, a little enclave of Lutyens work just along the coast from Voewood, where he designed Overstrand Hall, remodelled and created The Pleasaunce and built the Methodist Church. We will also visit the Sea Marge Hotel, designed by architect Sir Arthur William Blomfield and built between 1908 and 1912.
The following day, our last day, the plan is to do a sweep to the east from Voewood, stopping first at St Joseph church in Sheringham which is the work of Giles Gilbert Scott, then Happisburgh (see above) and lastly – if everyone still has energy left, a further 25 mile drive down to Gorleston-on- Sea to see Eric Gill’s one and only church, St Peter’s.
Voewood
Christmas Lunch at Woodlands Park, Cobham
Sunday, 10 December 2017
Following last year’s successful Christmas lunch at Woodlands Park Hotel at Cobham, we return to the hotel for 2017. Woodlands Park was designed in 1885 by Rowland Plumbe, RA for Mr. Frederick C. Bryant, who was the son of the founder of the well-known match company, Bryant and May. Plumbe was commissioned “with a free hand, unfettered in the slightest degree by economical considerations” to design a mansion in the Gothic Style. The most modern innovations were incorporated and Woodlands Park became one of the first country houses with electric light. The building is renowned for the grandeur of its oak panelled Grand Hall. The house became a centre for Edwardian Society in Surrey, with regular weekend house parties and lavish dinners hosted by the Bryant family.
At the turn of the century the house changed hands. The last private owners left the house after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 when the house became a luxury hotel. Between the 1940’s and 1981 the house was in public ownership and following extensive alterations, it was re-opened as a hotel in April 1981.
