ARTS SOCIETY – KENNET & SWINDON :: SECRET MESSAGES IN ELIZABETHAN TEXTILE DESIGNS

The FEBRUARY meeting of the Society will take place promptly

at 10.55 on Monday, 18 February  

at the Ellendune Centre, Wroughton.  

Coffee will be served from 10 00. Guests are always welcome

– as are prospective new members.

The lecture: “Embroidered with Woodbine and Eglantine –

Elizabethan Textile Furnishings”

Rich and imaginative textiles graced the interiors of aristocratic houses in Elizabethan England –

with colour, texture and symbolism.  

Sadly only a small fraction survives of the huge collections of textiles from Elizabethan mansions & palaces.

This illustrated talk explores the designs, techniques and uses of these textiles as well as the subject matter –

not least the Elizabethan obsession with incorporating hidden messages and ‘devises’.

The lecturer: Gillian White specialises in the visual arts of late Medieval and Tudor England.

She formerly worked for the NT at Hardwick Hall in Derbyshire where she was Curator and Collections Manager.

It was writing about the Hardwick Hall collections than enabled her to complete a PhD at the University of Warwick.

She is now a freelance lecturer, but teaches part-time at the Centre for the Study of the Country House

at Leicester University and works for Oxford University’s Continuing Education Department.