Starting her life in the jewellery trade 30 years ago, Joanna Hardy first studied to be a goldsmith and jewellery designer at Sir John Cass College, then worked for De Beers valuing and grading rough diamonds.
She then became a polished diamond dealer in Antwerp, Tel Aviv and Mumbai before moving into antique jewellerey and joining Philips's auction house, primarily as their diamond expert but also valuing other gemstones and period jewellery. In 1995 Joanna joined the jewellery department at Sotheby's London where for 14 years she was a senior specialist and auctioneer, regularly taking to the rostrum to sell jewellery in the company's New Bond Street galleries. She was also responsible for assessing and valuing jewellery worldwide for sales at Sotheby's in New York, Geneva and London.
In 2006 Joanna masterminded and launched a unique selling venture at Sotheby's, entitled 'London Rocks'. Designed as a pioneering exhibition of contemporary jewellery, seventeen artists/jewellers, predominantly London based, were invited to showcase their specially designed pieces for public sale In many ways London Rocks worked exactly like a Contemporary Art Exhibition: allowing original, progressive, fashionable and most importantly, collectable artists to showcase their work and expose it to a wider audience.
In addition, Joanna regularly conducts charity auctions and delivers seminars and lectures for various charities and institutions. A skilled broadcaster, she has lectured on radio and is a regular jewellery expert on the BBC Antiques Roadshow. She also lectures for Sotheby's institute, fr whom she conducted a hugely successful lecture series aboard Crystal Cruise liners and is an accredited NADFAS lecturer She recently appeared in a feature-length documentary 'Aphrodite's Drop: The Power of Pearls' and has been made a Freeman of the Goldsmith's Company, a Freeman of the City of London and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.
Joanna is a jewellery consultant and has created the Jewellery School of Excellence.
The lecture will be celebrating our 10th anniversary as an independent NADFAS society as well as commemorating the life of our late founder member, Alan Gibbons, who held the posts of chairman, treasurer and secretary alterrnatively until our independence.
It is also the birthplace of much of what is recognisable as American architecture, because after the Great Fire of 1871 necessity brought together the group of designers, architects and engineers now known as the Chicago School, who first perfected the techniques of building high that created the skyscraper, and - fortuitously - it was the location for the early work of Frank Lloyd Wright, the leader if not the pioneer of the Prairie School of architects.
The Encyclopaedia of Chicago (University of Chicago Press 2004) remarks that where other great world cities are distinguished by great cathedrals, royal palaces or government buildings, "Chicago's monuments have more often than not been business buildings, houses, schools and churches".This lecture offers an introduction to the wealth and variety of Chicago's architecture in and around the Loop central area, north to Graceland Cemetery, west to Oak Park and south to Hyde Park.
Recommended reading listMike Higginbottom has lectured in social and architectural history for the Universities of Nottingham, Birmingham and Keele, the Workers' Educational Association and the City of Stoke-on-Trent. He is a NADFAS lecturer and was tutor-guide for the Matlock Travel Society from 1986 to 2008.
His history learning programmes include Looking at Country Houses, The Derbyshire Derwent Valley, Fun Palaces: the history and architecture of the entertainment industry, Historic Towns & Cities, Survivals & Revivals: past views of English architecture, Victorian England and Waterways to Motorways: two centuries of travel.
He has conducted leisure-learning residential programmes on country houses, theatres, the seaside, cemeteries and sewerage, and the cities of Bath, Birmingham, Chester, Chicago, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield, York and New York and in the Isle of Man.
His most recent publication is Nottinghamshire Country Houses: past and present (Nottinghamshire County Council 1999).
Sir Noel Coward (1899-1973) wrote over fifty plays, many short stories, some novels, hundreds of songs (both music and lyrics) and was an excellent witty, and sometimes moving, minor poet. He acted on the professional stage from the age of ten.
As a leisure activity in the 1930's he painted, first in watercolour and then, on the advice of Sir Winston Churchill, in oils and later, gouache. After World War 2 he painted in England and Switzerland but his best and most vital work was done in Jamaica.
In this talk we shall trace Coward's stage and film career, listen to excerpts from his songs and plays but also look at a number of his paintings. His friend and secretary, Cole Lesley, said "The countless hours Noel spent at the easel were amongst the most happy and carefree of his life."
Frances Hughes spent 38 years in Education, 18 as a head teacher. She is now a freelance lecturer in Art & Theatre History. She is Hon. Secretary of the Shakespeare Reading Society (founded 1875) and Chairman of the Irving Society.
He retired in 1996 and then had much more time for his hobbies - botany (particularly wild European orchids) and glass.
His glass collection started when he saw two Georgian ale glasses in an antique shop in Dublin, where he had just been external examiner of hopeful medical students in the mid 1970s. Thereafter he discovered London glass shops and eventually built up a collection of about 70 Georgian drinking glasses. One of the dealers, Jeanette Hayhurst, guided him to appropriate purchases of glass and literature about glass, and persuaded him to join the Glass Association. Later he discovered a collection of mostly Sowerby pressed glass being sold from a stall in the Portobello Road and in the past five years has greatly increased his holding of early pressed glass mostly from the environs of Newcastle upon Tyne but also from Manchester and neighbouring towns.
The foundation of the Málaga Glass Museum made it possible for him to share his enjoyment of decorative domestic glass.Juan Antonio was born in Malaga; he has a PhD in philosophy and literature and is professor at the University of Málaga where he teaches in the department of History of Art and Communication.
He specialises in history, modern art, iconography, the history of sculpture and contemporary art about which he has published many articles; he talks at congresses both nationally and internationally.
His primary interest lies in the study of the iconography of modern age sculpture in Spain and Italy. He has also written widely on the Renaissance and Baroque.
Since 1997 he has been Director of the Museo de Arte Sacro de la Abadía Cisterciense de Santa Ana in Málaga, which is dedicated to Baroque sculpture and especially to the works of Pedro de Mena.
He worked as scientific advisor for the National Gallery in London to select the paintings for the recent exhibition The Sacred Made Real. Spanish Painting and Sculpture 1600-1700.Peter Webb has also written many articles for art journals as well as exhibition catalogues, and has made over 60 radio and television appearances. He has lectured at over 100 universities, colleges, museums and galleries around the world, including Tate Britain, Tate Modern, National Portrait Gallery, Whitechapel Art Gallery, Dulwich Art Gallery, Norwich Museum, London Institute of Contemporary Art, Manchester Art Gallery, Leamington Art Gallery, Centre Pompidou, Musee National d’Art Moderne, Paris, Trieste Museum of Fine Art, Montreal Museum of Fine Art, and the universities of Cambridge, Oxford, London, Sussex, East Anglia, Texas, Seattle, Montreal, Toronto, Hong Kong etc.
CAROLINE HOLMES is a garden historian, international lecturer, award-winning writer and design consultant. She lectures for NADFAS in the UK, Australia and New Zealand, Martin Randall Travel in France and Scotland and is a part-time tutor for the University of Cambridge's ICE. Author of ten books, including: Monet at Giverny, Follies of Europe - architectural extravaganzas and her latest, Impressionists in their Gardens which was nominated for the 2012 Garden Media Guild Inspirational Garden Book of the Year Award. Garden consultancies include the Royal Opera House's New Production Campus for the Performing Arts and around the church of Notre-Dame-de-Calais. She has presented several series on both TV and BBC Radio Four. One programme in the series Imperial Gardens for BBC Radio Four focused on the Alhambra and Generalife. Caroline is fascinated by how people and plants have historically shaped landscapes and what we can learn from them.