Past Chairman becomes President

Malcom Elliott who was chairman of what was then called NADFAS from 2009 to 2011 has now taken over the role of president of The Arts Society East Herts.  

2020 AGM

In order to conform with the present government regulations, this year's AGM was held on line before the lecture on November 24th.

This year's AGM of The Arts Society East Herts will be held before the lecture on 28th November 2019

All the relevant documents for the meeting will be available on this page shortly.

The 2018 Overseas Tour was to the Netherlands.  The first week of October, still lovely weather and plenty to see.  We stayed in the Hague, and also spent a day in  Amsterdam (busy) and Delft (charming).

We had an excellent guide, who showed us around a range of galleries, cathedrals and museums.  We learnt a lot – the girl is not wearing a pearl earing but a bit of costume jewellery, Amsterdam is not the capital of Holland, it’s the Hague, and anyway it’s not Holland but ‘The Netherlands’.  But you probably knew all that. 

Most astonishing picture was probably the Mesdag Panorama, a painting of Hague’s docks, shoreline, streets and countryside that completely surrounds the viewer.  We were treated to many ‘top paintings’ (notably said Girl with the PE, The Goldfinch, The Night Watch), several Rembrandt self-portraits, ditto Vincent van G, and one intriguing picture painted jointly by Rembrandt and Bruegel.

The tour was a great success, enjoyed by all. The picture is of some of our group paying homage to an early Mondrian.

Members were invited to Sworders Auction Rooms in Stanstead Mountfitchet to view the items on display ahead of the Sale of 20th Century Decorative Art and Design.  This included the Horlicks’ Collection of Robert “Mouseman” Thompson Furniture.  It was a revelation to tour the display and see the huge variety of objects destined for the auctioneer’s hammer.  To our inexperienced eyes, some looked highly undesirable; the aluminium “Aeroplane” desk with its futuristic design did, indeed, fail to sell, yet the set of six green plastic chairs which some thought simply garish, managed to fetch £540. 

Sworders holds its home interior sales every fortnight.  The sale on 9th-10th October was particularly special because of the large collection of Mouseman furniture, yet it also contained other treasures, such as a Pablo Picasso plate, a throne chair by Carlo Bugati and the Fairyland lustre vase and cover shown.  This came from Wedgwood’s most distinctive range of the inter-war years and was the project of one designer, Daisy Makeig-Jones who decorated her creations with a playful world of pixies, elves, imps and will-o’-the-wisps.  The vase sold for £21,000. 

Those members who visited the Auction Rooms are privileged to have seen the most expensive item of Mouseman furniture – the beautiful oak dresser, sporting not one, but two mice, sold for £35,000 (estimate £6-8,000).  The entire Horlicks’ Collection raised just over a quarter of a million pounds.

In July Members enjoyed a visit to Stowe House, a Grade I Listed Building formerly the seat of the Dukes of Buckingham and Chandos and now a public school maintained by the Stowe Preservation Trust. 

It was a perfect Summer’s day to be visiting such a magnificent house and gardens. In the House we learnt something of the checkered careers of the Dukes of Buckinghamshire, their decent into bankruptcy and the subsequent rescue of the buildings by their conversion in 1922 to a public 
school. The first Headmaster, J F Roxburgh, told his boys that by the time they left his establishment they should be acceptable on a dance floor and invaluable in a shipwreck.

The grounds were largely designed by William Kent with Capability Brown as his Head Gardener. Into the grounds are set a variety of architectural jewels, some of which we walked around. 

Altogether a grand day out.

Our Society celebrated this year’s Golden Anniversary with a super Summer lunch held in glorious sunshine in the splendid gardens  of our Chairman, Julia Fulton. 

The morning got off to an excellent start with a lecture by Linda Smith looking at art in this country over the last 50 years. The 50 years were in fact stretched a little to make way for John Piper and Francis Bacon’s earlier work.  The talk demonstrated just how may innovative artists this country has produced in the last half-century.

After the lecture we set off for Welwyn Garden City, to be greeted on arrival with a welcoming glass of celebratory Champagne.  The gardens and lawns were immaculate – the work of Julia’s husband Tony.  Tony had also organised a marquee configuration that allowed us all to sit under much needed shade and a loudspeaker system that ensured we heard speeches from Julia and our guest of honour, Florian Sweitzer, Chief Executive of the Arts Society.  Florian’s speech included a gracious tribute to the role played by individual Society committee members, and the pleasure committee members derive from their involvement in arranging Art Society events.

The food was wonderful – as ever Penelope Laing and her team quite spoilt us.

All together a grand occasion.

As part of our programme of sponsoring Young Arts projects we have donated £500 to the Children’s Support Service, Isabel Hospice.  The money is for arts and crafts materials used at group sessions and family days for pre-bereaved and post-bereaved young people. The art/craft activities provide much-needed well-being, fun and friendship for at least 50 young people whose lives have been turned upside down with the death of a parent, sibling or other close family member.

It is often very difficult for children in this situation to make sense of their loss and the changes in their lives without the vocabulary or understanding to deal with the trauma they are experiencing.  The Arts activities are a therapeutic tool to enable young people to identify and express their feelings, help them to feel less isolated, and to develop new friendships with other young people.

Specifically the money has helped fund two Saturday workshops attended by children 3-11 years old and led by the Hospice’s Children’s Service Manager, Tracie Slade.

The first day was for the children to get to know each other, while decorating and putting their names on individual petals of a collaged sunflower.  A second collage was created based on a story read to the children entitled ‘ A Huge Bag of Worries’ by Virginia Ironside.  The children were encouraged to write or draw their worries on Post-it notes which were collected into a visual Bag of Worries.

Artistic expression at the second workshop took a different turn, when biscuits were iced with feeling faces, photo frames were decorated for special photos, and memory stones created.  The workshop ended with a coming together of children, carers, staff and volunteers for a reflection ceremony.

The Isabel Hospice runs these activities free of charge for the children and are dependent on donations and support from organisations such as the Arts Society East Herts to whom they voted a big Thank-You.

Our principal Young Arts sponsorship for this year - £1,500 – has been a mosaic project by pupils at Dewhurst St Mary C of E Primary School in Cheshunt, to commemorate St Mary’s Church 600th Anniversary. 

Year 5 children were first asked to suggest a theme for the planned mosaics.  The consensus was Doves.  Under the tuition and guidance of Mosaic Artist Donna Reeves, assisted by June Crispin (a member of our Arts Society) the children were encouraged to put forward designs and were then shown how to convert these into mosaics.  Working in teams they created six doves, one for each of the six centuries of the life of St Mary’s Church. The centre of each dove shows an important historic event which occurred during that century.

The doves are now on display in the church -   a beautiful contribution to its 600th Anniversary

Members are warmly invited to join the Church Recorders’ group in a gentle ‘Spring Walk’ on Thursday 10th May.  The walk will start at 11 a.m. from the Feather’s Inn in Thundridge and take about 1 hour, returning to the pub for a sandwich lunch.

The walk will visit what remains of the original Thundridge "All Hallows and Little Saint Mary" church, which lies by the River Rib, a km from the its replacenment church of St. Mary, in the new Thundridge village.

The walk will be a chance to explore the history of Thundridge and the work of the Church Recorders who will shortly start work documenting the contents of St Mary.

If you would like to come please contact Rosemary Davis on rosemarydavis131@gmail.com or 01279 419763

Each year our Society sponsors an award for the best piece of 3D work submitted to the Hertford Arts Society’s Open Exhibition.  The winning piece this year was ‘Crouching Hare’ by Anne Gascoine and the runner-up was ‘The Scrum’ by Maria-Luisa Wilkings.

In the view of the judge both pieces exhibited great energy.  The Scrum formed an elegant arc from a set of figurative individuals while Crouching Hare combined solidity of the body with an intricate surface design.

Well done these two artists, and all those others whose work survived a stiff judging process and were accepted for the Exhibition

Our principal Young Arts sponsorship for this year is a mosaic project by pupils at Dewhurst St Mary C of E Primary School in Cheshunt.  The mosaics created by the children will be hung in the parish church of St Mary the Virgin, Cheshunt which this year celebrates its 6ooth anniversary. 

Under the supervision of Donna Reeves pupils from Year 5 onwards are creating six mosaic doves, each one representing one of the six centuries from 1418 to 2018. In the centre of each dove will be an historic reference to that particular century.

The work involves cutting different shapes (rectangle, square, triangle, round) from Italian mosaic tiles - the sort usually used in swimming pools; not as easy a task as it sounds.  The pupils are tackling the challenge with tremendous enthusiasm.