Christmas Ghosts: the Tradition of Winter Tales

We’ve told supernatural tales at midwinter for a very long time. In this talk Kirsty Hartsiotis takes us back to the earliest winter tales of the Middle Ages and the age of Shakespeare and Marlowe. We then explore the lost years of the 17th and 18th centuries, where it’s often thought that Christmas wasn’t celebrated much – but ghost tales at Christmas-tide were very much part of the season.  In the 19th century many traditional Christmas ghost tales were collected, and even now it’s considered one of the spookiest times of the year. We draw on midwinter tales from all around Britain in this talk and explore links with European midwinter traditions. This is a special Christmas lecture that draws on Kirsty’s long experience as an oral storyteller and writer and teller of local ghost and folk tales. You may well come away with a shiver running down your spine and with seasonally spooky stories to share around your fireside at Christmas! 

Kirsty Hartsiotis was the curator of the decorative and fine art at The Wilson Art Gallery and Museum, Cheltenham from 2008 to 2023. She is currently a curator at Swindon Museums, where she also worked prior to 2008.  At Cheltenham she looked after the Designated Arts and Crafts Movement collection, which includes the important private press archive, the Emery Walker Library. She’s curated many exhibitions on the Arts and Crafts and Private Press Movements, including Ernest Gimson: Observation, Imagination & Making.  Passionate about sharing her deep love for and knowledge of the arts, she’s also a freelance researcher, currently researching Arts and Crafts war memorials and the work of Arts and Crafts designers in churches in the South West. She’s also been an oral storyteller for over 20 years, and has published a number of collections of stories. She’s the Editor of the Journal of William Morris Studies, and was the newsletter editor for Society of Decorative Art Collections. She is a regular columnist for Cotswold Life, and writes for diverse other publications on art history and folklore.

Raphael, a god amongst painters

Ever since the French revolution there has developed a vicious, cretinizing tendency to consider a genius (apart from his work) as a human being more or less the same in every sense as other ordinary mortals. This is wrong. And if this is wrong for me, the genius of the greatest spiritual order or our day, a true modern genius, it is even more wrong when applied to those who incarnated the almost divine genius of the Renaissance, such as Raphael.

Salvador Dalí, Diary of a Genius (1964)

Raphael’s is one of the most famous names in art history, and until the late 19th century to emulate him was the goal for most artists succeeding him. Yet today he is not as well known as this might suggest. Is this because his biography is less dramatic than Caravaggio’s? or his career less tormented than Michelangelo’s? or is it because his qualities are difficult to define – the elusive qualities of grace, harmony and idealised beauty. This lecture asks “what is the magic of Raphael?” It takes a fresh look at Raphael, exploring what he achieved, and looking, as if for the first time, at the beauty and grace of his work. It will examine his astonishing ability to grow and transform himself over the years of his career, and whose tragically early death leaves us wondering – had he lived, what would have come next?

Dr Chantal Brotherton Ratcliff studied the History of Art at Edinburgh University and gained her PhD from the Warburg Institute, London University. With 40 years’ experience as a lecturer, Chantal has taught at Sotheby’s Institute of Art on the MA in Fine and Decorative Arts since 1989, and as a freelance lecturer for a number of societies and institutions in London, including the National Gallery and the Wallace Collection. Having also trained as a paintings conservator, she brings an understanding of the making and the physical painting to her lectures and study sessions.

The Changing Face of Contemporary Glass Art

Artists and designers love the possibilities of using and working with glass.

We have had a long love affair with glass. It inspires us with its beauty, surprises us with its versatility, challenges us with its complex physical properties.

Glass is performance art…from its fluidity to the way it scatters light in space.

But it is rare to find galleries hosting exhibitions devoted to these new trends. In 2024 2 Temple Place on London’s Embankment bucked the trend with a ground-breaking exhibition, The Glass Heart, showcasing works by leading glass artists, and receiving rave reviews. 

This lecture offers an in-depth introduction to the work of three very different artists, American Dale Chihuly, English James Maskrey and Ghanian Anthony Amoako Attah, all of whom have work in London’s V &A. Chihuly made the headlines in London with the V &A  chandelier (2001) and his enormous boundary-pushing outdoor glass sculpture installation in Kew Gardens (2019).  Maskrey not only works with artists in other disciplines, such as the Kenyan-born, Surrey-based Magdalene Odundo, to create stunning glass, but also  produces outstanding work in his own right, including sensitive and quirky representations of historical events. Ghanian-born Amoako-Attah’s is inspired by Ghanian Kente textiles which he recreates using the medium of screen-printed glass. In 2022 he was Artist of the Fair at Collect, London, the leading international showcase for contemporary art and design. The lecture offers the opportunity to admire incredible skill, innovative applications of traditional and contemporary techniques, and outstanding artistic vision. It includes explanations of the techniques used and the rationale behind the works.

Dr Susan Wood is a cultural historian and practising artist. Her PhD in German (Sheffield) and career as University Lecturer involved researching and publishing widely. She gave over 60 international conference papers on German and European culture. Her MA in German Art (Courtauld Institute) and MA in Glass (Sunderland) give her both an academic and a practical background for her talks.