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Newsletter Spring/Summer 2014 SODAC COMMITTEE Spring 2014 African Lion candy box designed by Robert Minkin and pro- duced by Wedgwood, 1963 © Wedgwood Museum SODAC Newsletter Spring/Summer 2014 SODAC COMMITTEE Spring 2014 Chair Secretary Andrew Renton Caroline Alexander Head of Applied Art Curator of Decorative Arts Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Harris Museum Wales Market Square Cathays Park, Preston, PR1 2PP Cardiff, CF10 3NP Tel: 01772 905411 Tel: 029 2057 3297 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Treasurer Website Officer Laura Gray Laura Breen Freelance curator Ceramics Research Centre—UK Email: [email protected] University of Westminster Email: [email protected] Membership Secretary Events Organiser Rachel Conroy Alyson Pollard Curator of Applied Art Curator of Metalwork and Glass Amgueddfa Cymru - National Museum Walker Art Gallery Wales Liverpool Museums Cathays Park, 127, Dale Street Cardiff, CF10 3NP Liverpool, L2 2JH Tel: 029 2057 3383 Tel: 0151 478 4263 Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Newsletter Editor Committee Members Kirsty Hartsiotis Ruth Shrigley Curator of Decorative Arts & Designated Collections Manchester Art Gallery The Wilson Cheltenham Art Gallery & Museum Clarence Street Jean Vacher Cheltenham, GL50 3JT Crafts Study Centre Tel: 01242 775712 Email: [email protected] Celebrating gold boxes p. 6 Sarcophagus Cabinet, 1772, CF6 © © CF6 1772, Cabinet, Sarcophagus Plymouth City Council (Arts & Heritage Service) & Heritage Council (Arts City Plymouth The current Treasurer is standing down from their role on the SODAC committee. If you are interested in applying, please first contact the outgoing member for an informal discussion of the responsibilities of the role: Laura Gray [email protected] If you would like to apply, please then send an expres- sion of interest to the Chair, Andrew Renton ([email protected]) by 5pm on Friday 4 May. The committee will make the final selection if more than one person applies for either role. Please do feel free to pass this message on to anybody you think might be a suitable candidate, even if they are not a current member of SODAC. The Newsletter Editor would like to give advance notice that she will be standing down after the Autumn/ Winter 2014 edition of the newsletter. If you are interested in taking this role from November 2014 on- wards, please contact Kirsty Hartsiotis [email protected] for an informal discussion of the role. Study day at The Higgins Art Gallery & Museum, Bedford Wednesday 25th June 2014, 11am—5pm The Higgins Bedford re-opened last year following a £5.8 million transformation of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery, Bedford Museum and Bedford Gallery. The museum houses fine and decorative art collections of international renown, including a particularly important collection of work by William Burges and other Victorian decorative art from the Handley-Read collection. The redevelopment incorporates state-of-the- art facilities and technology to provide a brand-new visitor experience. Hosted by Victoria Partridge, Keeper of Fine and Decorative Art, and her colleagues, this study day will begin with a tour of the museum and an exploration of the concepts behind the redeveloped galleries. In the afternoon the focus will be on the decorative art collections specifically and in particular the redisplay of the Burges furniture and the Handley-Read collections. Price: £10 (SODAC members), £20 (non-SODAC members; includes one year’s subscription to the Society) Numbers for this study day will be limited to 20. To book a place, please reply no later than Friday 30th May to: Andrew Renton Head of Applied Art Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales Cathays Park CF10 3NP Tel: 029 2057 3297 Email: [email protected] Since the last SODAC newsletter came out, several museums have reopened their doors to the public. In Bedford, the Cecil Higgins Gallery and Bedford Museum have combined to become the Hig- gins, in Cheltenham a new extension designed by Berman Geddes Stretton has more than doubled the display space in the rebrand- ed Wilson, and in Ditchling Adam Richards Architects have creat- ed new spaces linking the old museum buildings. Each of these museums have strong decorative arts collections. At the Wilson the designated Arts and Crafts Movement collection has been redisplayed with funding from the Designation Chal- lenge Fund, and The Paper Store gives the Emery Walker Library, the last intact Arts and Crafts library, its first permanent display location alongside archive collections on Cheltenham’s history and local hero Edward Wilson. The Higgins has been redeveloped throughout, and now has an all-new gallery devoted to its William Burges collection, including the newly acquired Zodiac Settle, as well as a new Design Gallery featuring some of Britain’s most im- portant stylistic movements from Rococo to Gothic Revival and Neo-Classical to Arts and Crafts . Ditchling Museum of Art + Ditchling Museum © Ditchling Museum Craft has been redeveloped with an HLF grant and other funding Art + Craft, Adam Richards Architects, to showcase the work of the Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, Brotherton/Lock and the artists who lived and worked in the village. This year’s annual International Commit- tee for Museums and Collections of Dec- orative Art and Design (ICDAD) is Collec- tors and Collections: their role in decora- tive arts and design museums, taking place 15–17 October 2014 in Graz, Aus- tria, followed by a trip to Ljubljana, Slo- venia on the 18-19 October. ICDAD have out a call for papers for the conference on the theme of the role of private or discrete collections within museums. ICDAD is looking for 20 minute presentations. If you are interested in submitting a paper, please send a 200-300 words abstract, a short biographical note and contact details to Annie Carlano, ICDAD Secretary ([email protected]) by 30 April. Visit www.icom-icdad.com for more details. The Centre for Studies of Home is in is looking for papers for its 24 June 2014 conference Home-work: connections, transitions and the wider world at the Geffyre Museum of the Home, London, on themes that ex- amine the connections between home, work and the wider world from the eighteenth century to the present, focusing on temporality, spatiali- ty and domestic practices in relation to paid and unpaid work. Please submit proposals including title and abstract (200-300 words) by 18 April to Jacqueline Winston-Silk at jwinston-silk@geffrye- museum.org.uk. The programme will be confirmed by early May. The Attingham Trust is currently offering two bursaries. The first is an At- tingham Trust organised study programme on French Eighteenth-Century Studies, 12—17 October 2014 at The Wallace Collection. Based at Hertford House, but with a day at Waddesdon Manor, this intensive, non-residential study programme aims to foster a deeper knowledge and understanding of French 18th century fine and decorative art and is intended primarily to aid professional development. The course will involve object-based study, han- dling sessions and a look at behind-the-scenes conservation. The course di- rector is Dr Helen Jacobsen, Curator of French 18th century Decorative Arts at the Wallace Collection. The closing date is the 30 April. The Trust is also offering £1000 towards MA’s in History of Art at UEA. The Trust is collaborating with the School of Art History and World Art Studies with a new module, At Close Quarters: The English Country House and its Col- lections, which provides a unique opportunity for the sustained and in-situ study of English country houses and their collections, including a residential week at Houghton Hall in Norfolk, led by Dr Andrew Moore, Director of the Trust’s Summer School. Go to the Attingham Trust website for further details: www.attinghamtrust.org/courses. Two of the sector’s main funding bodies have recently an- nounced their funding allocations for the current period, 2014- 6. ACE has recently announced the latest round of awards for the Designation Development Fund. Eighteen projects have received a share of £1.4 million, and a third of these have a decorative arts focus. The DCMS/Wolfson Museums and Galler- ies Improvement Fund has made forty grants, and again there are a significant number of decorative arts projects. Two projects have been awarded funding from both sources: Compton Verney is to redisplay it’s extensive Chinese Collec- tion, remodelling the galleries and creating new interpretative materials to bring it to life and the Ashmolean Museum is to display the rare and highly valuable Welby bequest of silver and Kunstkammer objects. It will also produce a programme Three 16th and 17th century Nautilus shells with of art-historical and metallurgical research of the collection. silver gilt mounts, Welby bequest © Ashmolean The other Designation projects include: Northampton Museum Museum, University of Oxford & Art Gallery’s Virtually All Shoes project to digitised and make available online their collection. Museums Sheffield is upgrading the storage for its 4000 strong cutlery collection, and creating new online and printed resources. The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge’s Digital Layers project will create a digital interface that will give visitors access to a range of visual information and text about their collection of illuminated manuscripts. Lastly, the Fashion Museum, Bath will be ex- panding access to and research on two important but lesser known Worth Paquin archive and the Lace & Whitework collection. The Bowes Museum is revitalising its ceramics galleries with funding from the DCMS/Wolfson fund, and Lotherton Hall in Leeds and Manchester Art Gallery are both developing new displays for their costume and textile collections. The V&A is continuing with FuturePlan, with a grant towards its 1600-1800 galler- ies, due to open later this year.
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