We have had to make urgent changes to our venue and programme for the remainder of this season (March-May 2026). Due to circumstances beyond our control, we are changing the venue for our meetings to the Palace Hotel in Buxton from 24 March 2026 at least until the end of this season. To make parking easier for local residents we are also starting half an hour earlier at 10:30 so people do not have to rush to get their cars at the end of free parking.
Andy Goldsworthy – revealing the beauty of nature
29th September at 10:30
Andy Goldsworthy is one of the most interesting and innovative landscape artists working in Britain today. He mostly works in the open air, using natural materials such as leaves, ice, stones or trees to make exquisitely beautiful but usually ephemeral images in the great Romantic landscape tradition. Fortunately, although most of his works eventually disintegrate, melt away or fall over, they are all carefully photographed and included in extremely desirable and lavish ‘coffee-table’ books.
Frank Woodgate
Tickling the Ivories: a Short History of the Piano (Music)
27th October
Both a mark of social status and an indicator of cultural interest, the piano, and its predecessors, was a fixture in most homes for nearly five centuries. It served to entertain and to edify in equal measure and to act as the work-horse for musicians throughout that period. But the instrument that we know and love today, and the music written for it, was slow in its genesis and grew from very humble beginnings. The clavichord, spinet, harpsichord, forte piano, pianola and reproducing piano were all important milestones in the journey that the modern pianoforte took. Using carefully selected sound examples, film clips and other performance artifacts, this lecture will chart the rise of the piano and explore some of the approaches that great artists took when coming to terms with it.
Raymond Holden
Going to the Ball – Fashion to impress
17th November
During the Victorian Era, magnificent fancy dress balls became one of the grandest and most fashionable ways for a society hostess to make her mark. These balls were reported in newspapers and magazines in great detail. Importantly, who was there, what they were wearing, who designed their gown and the historical figure they represented. Today’s social media and influencers would literally have had a ball. No expense was spared and these balls became the elite event of the year. Queen Victoria was a great fan along with Daisy, The Countess of Warwick and the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire whose 700 invitations to their ball in 1897 summoned guests to appear “in a historical costume dated earlier than 1820’’. What an open field and the guests dressed to impress!
Jacqueline Hyman
The Arts and Crafts Movement in the Midlands
26th January 2027
Many people are familiar with the national designers of the 19th century Arts and Crafts Movement such as William Morris and Charles Ashbee. But the Midlands made a huge contribution to the movement as well. Designers at The Bromsgrove Guild of Handicrafts for example produced the exquisite wrought iron gates for Buckingham Palace. This lecture sets the work of these Midlands designers in the context of the national Arts and Crafts Movement using examples of jewellery made by Arthur and Georgina Gaskin, stained glass by Florence Camm, ceramics from the Ruskin Pottery and more. It also reveals the best locations in the region to see examples of local Arts and Crafts Movement design.
Sally Hoban
Art Deco Jewellery: The Glamour Revolution
23rd February 2027
The Art Deco movement was a time when fashion and jewellery were the calling cards of the time. At the start of the ‘roaring ‘20’s, people were exhausted by the ravages of the First World War, there was an appetite for change and Art Deco was the popular design movement that answered that call. The talk Art Deco Jewellery: The Glamour Revolution explores this design movement through the jewellery, fashion, architecture and automobiles of that era.
Nicholas Merchant