October 2008

The FARNHAM DECORATIVE AND FINE ARTS SOCIETY met at the Maltings on Tuesday 21 October.   Chairman, Peter Duffy commenced by congratulating the Young Arts section for a very successful Schools Art Exhibition at the University for the Creative Arts which ran for 2 weeks.    He went on to remind members that cheques were the sole method of paying for Visits and Study Days. The Renaissance Portrait from Van Eyck to Titian Study day will be on Wednesday 26 November, linking in with the National Gallery Exhibition.

Members might wish to see the new exhibition at the Royal Academy on Byzantium as this will link in with the February lecture.

He also put in a plea for someone strong to help on the Projection Team, a vital role for the success of the Society’s monthly lectures.  

Finally, the Chairman introduced the Lecturer Janusz Karczewski-Slowikowski to speak on “18th Century Georgian Furniture”.

The lecturer explained how it was that by combining good design with good craftsmanship, 18th century English furniture came to be universally regarded as of a particularly high standard.  The immigration of foreign craftsmen and designers, particularly in the late 17th century,  contributed significantly to this as they brought with them knowledge of fashionable styles and improved cabinet-making techniques. However, continental styles such as the baroque and rococo were possibly too flamboyant for the more conservative English taste and it was through the work of designer-craftsmen such as Chippendale that greater emphasis came to be placed on the overall design of furniture  rather than just its decoration.  This was to be an approach which produced a particularly fine and elegant style of furniture for fashionable Georgian interiors.  Whereas Walnut had been the principal wood used for the construction of fashionable furniture at the beginning of the 18th century, it was replaced by Mahogany by the 1720s.  Mahogany came to be used initially because it could be imported duty-free from British colonies but cabinet-makers soon realised it had superb wood-working qualities which made it extremely suitable for the construction of delicately designed but nevertheless strong furniture.  The second half of the 18th century saw a revival of interest in classicism through the neo-classical style or architecture and interior decoration for which Robert Adam is so famous.  His work influenced main-stream furniture design and decoration as is evidenced in the style associated with Hepplewhite, another designer-craftsman of the period.  The achievement of 18th century cabinet makers was to provide well designed and well made furniture which, in Hepplewhite’s own words, combined “elegance with utility” and blended “the useful with the agreeable”.