Members may be interested in the following event at The National Museum of Scotland:
Join us for a special film screening and panel discussion to hear about the Ash Rise project. Learn more about Scotland’s native ash tree, the challenges of ash die-back and how the material is celebrated in contemporary furniture making.
Inspired by the ongoing touring exhibition Ash Rise, presented by the Scottish Furniture Makers Association, the documentary film of the same name tells the story of this beautiful tree, its historic and contemporary brilliance as a material and the challenges of ash die-back.
The film screening will be followed by a panel discussion featuring the film’s creative director, Tom Addy, alongside contemporary furniture maker, Helena Robson, and the Chief Forester for Scotland, Dr Helen McKay. The discussion will be chaired by Stephen Jackson, Senior Curator of Furniture and Woodwork.
This auditorium event will be followed by an opportunity to meet the makers and see examples of ash woodwork and furniture up close in the Events Space on Level 2, from 15:30–16:30. The Events Space will also be open to visitors from 13:00 until the event begins at 14:00.
Members may be interested to know that BAFRA (British Antique Furniture Restorers’ Association) has arranged a visit to the Wycombe Museum https://wycombemuseum.org.uk the morning of Friday 27thJune 2025 where, at 11am, we will have a talk on Chairmaking in the Chilterns by curator Catherine Grigg followed by a tour of the chairs and hopefully the opportunity to examine more closely some of the exhibits there. We would like to meet for lunch somewhere and then are planning to move on to High Wycombe Chair Making Museum CIC –https://www.kraftinwood.com/ for a guided tour by Robert Bishop.
The agenda for 6 July 2025 is to be found here. The Minutes of the 2024 AGM are here. The Annual Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 December 2024 are here.
N.B. The Museum is closed on the Monday of the Reception: when you attend please enter by the Hoxton Station Entrance.
Members of the Regional Furniture Society and Furniture History Society are invited to a celebratory reception in honour of the 50 years Bill and Gerry Cotton have devoted to Regional Furniture Studies.
Just over 50 years ago, Bill Cotton was drawn to the possibility that country furniture could be defined by regional characteristics influenced by geography, materials, trade, rural customs and traditional ways of life. He and Gerry started collecting chairs with makers’ stamps and brands which they referenced to trade directories, census returns and newspaper archives to establish provenance. And so began a lifetime project to identify the makers and define the regional distinctions of furniture made across the British Isles.
This reception at the Museum of Home will be a moment to reflect on their achievement and acknowledge the significance of the Cotton Chair Collection and Archive they have donated to the museum, and the massive indexes of English regional furniture makers now being added to BIFMO.
There will be short tributes led by Liz Hancock and Simon Swynfen Jervis at 2.30pm.
There is no charge for this event, but you are required to register. Places are limited and will be allocated first come, first served. To register please email your details to: events.rfs@gmail.com
The agenda for 30 June 2024 is to be found here. The Minutes of the 2023 AGM are here. The Annual Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 December 2023 are here.
This year we are again going to offer the possibility of joining the AGM by Zoom.
The Annual General Meeting of the Regional Furniture Society will be held at the University of Kent, Canterbury in the Rutherford College Building and via Zoom on Sunday 30 June at 9:00 a.m.
The Agenda, the Minutes of the AGM held in 2023 and the Annual Report & Accounts for 2023 will be posted on the website in the next few days, as well as being available at the Conference/AGM on 30 June.
Members who wish to take part in the AGM via Zoom should email the Secretary on: justj2r2@gmail.com
The Secretary will then forward to those members the access code for the Zoom meeting, the Agenda, the Minutes of the AGM held in 2023, and the Annual Report & Accounts for 2023. This will be done a week before the meeting.
The Annual Report and Accounts for 2023 can also be sent to any member requiring a paper version. They should contact the Secretary to request a copy and should send an A4 self-addressed envelope.
Scottish Furniture, 1500-1914, about to be published by National Museums Scotland is the first comprehensive narrative account of furniture-making in Scotland. In this lecture, the book’s author, Stephen Jackson, will guide us through the evolving landscape of Scottish furniture-making with particular reference to national and regional characteristics.
Based in Edinburgh, Stephen is editor of the Regional Furniture Society’s annual journal. Graduating from Cambridge in 1993, his career with furniture started in London at the Geffrye Museum, now the Museum of the Home. He wrote a MPhil with David Jones at St Andrews before becoming a curator at Middlesex University and then at the Victoria and Albert Museum. He joined National Museums Scotland in 1999 and the new book is the culmination of many years of research during which he travelled extensively to study furniture in the wild.
To attend this on-line talk, please apply to the RFS Events organiser by 15th June at events.rfs@gmail.com. You will then be sent a link shortly before the event.
This visit is an exclusive RFS event, whilst the previously listed Symposium is not.
We will meet for coffee in the café of the Parkinson Building, where Mark Westgarth, Associate Professor in Art History & Museum Studies at the University, will talk to us about the library of mainly British furniture books and manuscripts dating from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, created by the antiques dealer John Victor Bedford (1941-2019) and gifted to the University of Leeds. Mark is lead curator of the exhibition, which runs until 21 December 2024.
We then travel by public transport to Temple Newsam Museum, which has a cafe for lunching. Adam Toole, Curator of and Furniture and Decorative Art will show us some of the vernacular furniture acquired by Christopher Gilbert, the museum curator and founding member of the RFS who was based at Temple Newsam for his entire working life. The day finishes at 16:30
Cost of the day £10, (refreshments not included) A booking form is available to print from here.
Members may be interested in the following offering from the Furniture History Society and BIFMO:
Join us online every Tuesday throughout June, when curators and historians will consider the evolution and variety of country house interiors in Britain and Ireland created between 1780 and 1950, with an emphasis on furniture makers and designers. Each of the four sessions will deal with a different stylistic phase and will be introduced by either Dr Megan Aldrich (sessions 1-3) or Elisabeth Bogdan (session 4). Every week the introduction will be followed by two experts who will provide case studies on specific country houses, ranging from Castletown House in Co. Kildare to Castle Drogo in Devon. There will also be short Q&A sessions.
Here is an overview of the course programme:
Session 1 – 4th June
Title: Reconsidering the Antique: later neoclassical interiors
Speakers: Dr Megan Aldrich, Dr Kyle Leyden & James Collett-White
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Session 2 – 11th June
Title: Opulence and Excellence in Regency Interiors
Speakers: Dr Megan Aldrich, Dr Alexandra Loske & Adriana Turpin
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Session 3 – 18th June
Title: The Arts and Crafts Country Houses: Alternative Interpretations of the Past
Speakers: Dr Megan Aldrich, Jessica Insley & Annette Carruthers
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Session 4 – 25th June
Title: The Country House in the Twentieth Century
Speakers: Elisabeth Bogdan, Katherine Sharp & Professor Pat Kirkham.
Tickets may be bought for individual sessions or for the entire course, but you will benefit from a discount if all 4 sessions are bought together. Don’t worry if you cannot attend the sessions live because they will be recorded and links to the recording will be sent to ticketholders. These recordings will not be available to purchase after the course has ended. FHS members and ECD members will receive a discount on all tickets.
For further information and to purchase tickets please click here to travel straight to the relevant Eventbrite page. If you have any questions, please contact Ann Davies at bifmo@furniturehistorysociety.org.
This 2-day symposium, developed as part of the exhibition ‘Part of the Furniture: The Library of John Bedford’ (Treasures of the Brotherton Gallery, University of Leeds, 9 January – 21 December 2024), and in collaboration with Temple Newsam, Leeds, seeks to explore furniture history as a subject and to reflect on what furniture history of the future might look like.
The history of furniture remains one of the dominant areas of interest within the history of the so-called ‘Decorative Arts’. Since it emerged in the 19th century, scholarship focused on furniture history has expanded far beyond the interests of its earlier pioneers, transforming furniture history as a discipline.
The symposium programme includes a facilitated tour at Temple Newsam (part of Leeds Museums & Galleries) to explore the world-class furniture collections at the house, as well as an opportunity to see extra materials from the collection of John Bedford at the University.
Bookings details and the conference programme are in this link.
Regional Furniture Society 
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