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Lecture Programme

All our lectures commence at 10.45 am coffee is available from 10.00 a.m.

09October Wednesday
Lecture Programme

London’s Lost Department Stores – Tessa Boase

Time: Wednesday, 9 October 2024 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Mercure Preston Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
London’s sumptuous Victorian and Edwardian department stores changed the capital – and changed its women. Shoppers of every rank were lavishly wooed, seduced and often undone by the temptations laid out before them in these new ‘cathedrals of desire’.  Starting on Oxford Street’s ‘golden mile’, we’ll set off on a cultural tour of the capital’s […]
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13November Wednesday
Lecture Programme

Eric Ravilious -Life and Work – James Russell

Time: Wednesday, 13 November 2024 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Mercure Preston Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
Eric Ravilious was only 39 when he died on active service as a war artist in 1942, yet he had already achieved amazing things. A brilliant wood engraver and designer, he is best known today for his haunting watercolours in which lighthouses, white horses, empty rooms and downland paths become marvels. Over the past decade […]
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11December Wednesday
Lecture Programme

Victoria and Albert – Art Love and Christmas – Barbara Askew

Time: Wednesday, 11 December 2024 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Mercure Preston Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were first cousins and born just three months apart in 1819. Their shared enthusiasm for art and music endured throughout the twenty-two years of their marriage and they demonstrated their love through the works of art and jewellery they gave each other for birthdays, Christmases and anniversaries. Victoria and Albert […]
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08January Wednesday
Lecture Programme

Alchemy and Adventure: A history of exotic colours and poisonous pigments – Lynne Gibson

Time: Wednesday, 8 January 2025 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Mercure Preston Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
In our modern world it’s easy to take colour for granted. Yet before organic chemistry the most desirable pigments were often exotic or poisonous. Merchants supplied pungent yellow ‘purree’ nuggets from India, cochineal ‘grana’ from the holds of Spanish galleons, lapis rock carried by camel train from the mountains of Badakhshan. Alchemists prepared deadly ‘King’s […]
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12February Wednesday
Lecture Programme

Priceless Peggy – Peggy Guggenheim – Alex Epps

Time: Wednesday, 12 February 2025 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Mercure Preston Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
Peggy Guggenheim was the ‘poor little rich girl’ who changed the face of twentieth century art. Not only was she a woman ahead of her time but also one who helped to define it. She discovered and nurtured a new generation of artists producing a new kind of art. Through collecting not only art, but […]
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12March Wednesday
Lecture Programme

Making and Unmaking: The elemental land art of Julie Brook – Simon Seligman

Time: Wednesday, 12 March 2025 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Mercure Preston Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
Many viewers of a BBC4 profile of artists who work out in nature, presented by Dr James Fox, were haunted by the fire stacks of the only female artist featured, Julie Brook. My lecture explores this fascinating artist and the range of her work over four decades in some of the world’s wild places, centred […]
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14May Wednesday
Lecture Programme

How to look slowly: Impressionism – Jo Rhymer

Time: Wednesday, 14 May 2025 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Mercure Preston Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
Looking slowly at an Impressionist painting might at first seem counterintuitive, since one of the concepts associated with Impressionism is that the artist captures quickly in paint a fleeting, fugitive moment. Although their works frequently appear to have been painted speedily, in reality, this was not always the case.
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11June Wednesday
Lecture Programme

Celebrating the Centenary of Winne-the-Pooh – James Campbell

Time: Wednesday, 11 June 2025 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Mercure Preston Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
2024 – 2028 marks one hundred years since Winnie-the-Pooh was introduced to children of all ages in the four iconic books created by A A Milne and E H Shepard. First seen in When We Were Very Young (1924), Winnie-the-Pooh and the characters of the Hundred Acre Wood had their own adventures in Winnie-The-Pooh (1926), […]
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10September Wednesday
Lecture Programme

Riviera Paradise: Art Design and Pleasure in the 1920s – Mary Alexander

Time: Wednesday, 10 September 2025 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Mercure Preston Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
Since the C19 English high society had ‘wintered over’ on the Côte d’Azur, but always left by April. In the early 1920s, however, an intoxicating mix of artists, writers, musicians and international visitors, inspired by a mythological seascape of luminous colours, created a new summer season. Sun tans and sportswear soon became ‘de rigueur’ in […]
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08October Wednesday
Lecture Programme

The Art and History of Folding Fans from Antiquity to the 20th Century – Scott Schiavone

Time: Wednesday, 8 October 2025 10:45 am - 12:00 pm / Mercure Preston Hotel, Samlesbury, Preston New Road, Preston PR5 0UL
Fixed Fans have been used for millennia, principally for cooling but also for religious and ceremonial purposes. The earliest known fixed fan was found in the tomb of Tutankhamun and dates to around 1323 BCE. In Europe, the folding fan was preferred and later developed into a ubiquitous accessory for the fashionable elite. They were […]
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