Art Workers’ Guild, 6 Queen Square, London WC1N 3AT, 10.30am – 5.00pm
The 2024 Furniture History Society symposium, ‘New Light on Arts and Crafts Furniture and Interiors’, will be held on Saturday 23 March at the Art Workers’ Guild, Queen Square, London, and will be live-streamed.
The day will feature papers from an eminent panel of curators, scholars and furniture makers. The first session will focus on new research into the interpretation of surviving interiors, including discoveries made while preparing the recent refurbishment at Kelmscott Manor, Gloucestershire and an exploration of the rich and complex mix of furnishings at Emery Walker’s House, Hammersmith. There will be a discussion of the issues facing the National Trust in presenting their newest property, Gertrude Jekyll’s house Munstead Wood, which is currently unfurnished.
In the second sessions speakers will present fresh information on individual designers of furniture and will bring to light the often little-known craftspeople who made it. Papers will include the transmission of design traditions through workshop practice, down to contemporary makers such as the Marchmont workshop, and the influence of early published photographs on later designers, manufacturers and copyists.
PROGRAMME
10.00 – 10.30 am
Registration and coffee/tea
10.30-10.35 am
Welcome by Christopher Rowell, FHS Chairman
10.35-10.40 am
Introduction by chair of morning: Tessa Wild – Designers and Interiors
10.40-11.05 am
Evidential Choreography: Recomposing the interiors at Kelmscott Manor
Dr Kathy Haslam FSA, Curator, Kelmscott Manor
11.05-11.30 am
Emery Walker’s House: The London Arts & Crafts Home
Mallory Horrill, Senior Curator at Emery Walker’s House, Curator of Collections & Exhibitions at the William Morris Society
11.30-11.40 am
Short Break
11.40am-12.05 pm
Gertrude Jekyll and Munstead Wood: the home of the artist-gardener
Dr Caroline Ikin, Curator, National Trust, Munstead Wood
12.05-12.30 pm
Evolution, not revolution. Interpreting Ernest Gimson’s designs through the generations
The Marchmont Workshop: Richard Platt & Sam Cooper, Furniture Makers
12.30-12.45 pm
Q & A
12.45-2.00 pm
Lunch
2.00-2.05 pm
Introduction by chair of afternoon: Martin Levy –Designers and Makers
2.05-2.25 pm
The Early Years of the Art Workers’ Guild
Peyton Skipwith, Fine art consultant and author
2.25-2.45 pm
BIFMO and the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society Catalogues, 1888-1916
Clarissa Ward, BIFMO 19th/early 20th Century Editor & Jo Buckrell, BIFMO Research Assistant and Researcher, Haslemere Educational Museum
2.45-3.10 pm
A Question of Attribution: the contemporaneous appropriation of architect designed Arts & Crafts furniture.
Tony Peart, Senior Lecturer in Illustration at the University of Cumbria
3.10-3.25 pm
Short Break
3.25-3.50 pm
Augustus H. Mason: ‘Cabinet Maker, chiefly special designs’
Annette Carruthers, Honorary Senior Lecturer, University of St Andrews
3.50-4.15 pm
Garden of Hearts: A Case Study of an American Arts and Crafts Masterpiece
Daniel S. Sousa, Assistant Curator, Historic Deerfield, Massachusetts, USA
4.15-4.45 pm
Q & A
4.45-5.00 pm
Closing remarks/summing up
5.00 pm
End
Tickets for the Symposium and for lunch (optional) will be available on Eventbrite in February 2024.
Image Credit: Chair designed by Ernest Gimson after 1888, V&A Circ.232-1960; Munstead Wood, designed by Edwin Lutyens for Gertrude Jekyll, 1896; Lily wallpaper designed by William Morris, 1873, V&A E.484-1919
