Date/Time
Saturday, 12 October 2024 at 2:30 pm - 4:30 pm
A lecture on Saturday 12th October 2024 at the Bath Royal Scientific and Literary Institution, Queen Square, Bath. BA1 2HN. This will follow the Annual General Meeting of Avon Gardens Trust commencing @ 2.30pm in the Elwin Room.
The lecture with Dr. Laura Mayer ‘Chinoiserie – Tea, Trade Routes and a Taste for the Exotic’ will commence at 3.00PM following refreshments.
Chinoiserie, an early European interest in the arts of the Far East, blossomed in Georgian Britain. It encompassed everything from furniture design and ceramics, to gardening and garden buildings. Soon, every landscape park in the country had a pagoda or tea-house; a Chinese bridge, barge or brightly painted ‘umbrella’ under which to take tea, that most fashionable of imported luxuries. This lecture examines the expanding trade routes of eighteenth-century Britain, as well as the craze for informal gardening ‘without line or level’, which had been gaining traction since William Temple’s 1685 appraisal of East Asian garden asymmetry. It considers the full spectrum of structural accuracy to be found within British Chinoiserie, and ultimately questions just how English was the English landscape garden, after all?
Biography: Dr. Laura Mayer
Laura Mayer is an independent lecturer, writer and researcher. Originally an art historian with a side of Spanish, she accidentally fell into garden history whilst working at the Alhambra in Granada. She has an MA in Garden History and a PhD in eighteenth-century architectural and landscape patronage, both from the University of Bristol. Laura has published extensively – particularly on Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Humphry Repton – as well as on the historic gardens of Cambridgeshire. Laura lectures regularly for Cambridge University Botanic Gardens and the Gardens Trust, and works as a conservation consultant for the National Trust and Land & Heritage. Laura lives in Bristol, in a lilac-and-blue Georgian house which she wishes had Granada’s weather – and a proper garden.
Price for the lecture – Members £12.00, Guests £16.00. Members attending just the AGM are free.
For booking use the link to Ticket Tailor [small booking fee applies].
Further details of all AGT events may be obtained from Peter Hills – [email protected] or phone 07748507166
(For those wishing to attend just the Annual General Meeting of Avon Gardens Trust, the entry is free, but ticket prices apply for the lecture to assist in covering costs)
Further details may be obtained from Peter Hills –07748507166 or email- [email protected]
Getting there
Use the Park & Ride from: Newbridge, Odd Down and Lansdown all into the City centre and a 5-10 minute walk to Queen Square.
Local Parking: Parking in the Charlotte Street and the Waitrose Podium car parks nearby, also Avon Street and Southgate car parks – (charges apply).
Bath train station and a 15 minute walk to Queen Square