My great - uncle died some years before i as born, but I'd always been fascinated by his maps.  My quest to find out more about began in late 2006 when i set out to produce a booklet of photos illustrating some of Max's maps as a Christmas gift for my brothers.

After deciding this needed some biographical information, I discovered there was almost nothing about Max, either in books or on the internet. And so my journey began.

I've now put much of my accumulated knowledge into an illustrated biography, MacDonald Gill; Charting a Life published by Unicorn Press June 2020.

I have also set up a website, with work & family history, and also many illustrations of his maps etc    https;//macdonaldgill.com 

British artist , Mahtab Hussain (b1981)  explores the important relationship between identity, heritage and displacement. His themes develop through long term research articulating a visual language that challenges the prevailing concepts of multiculturalism.

He received his BA in historyof Art at Goldsmiths College specialising in Fine Art Photography,  his MA in Museum and Gallery Management, City University, London: awarded an Arts Humanities Research Council (AHRC)  he completed a MA in Photography at Nottingham Trent University.

Michaela makes a welcome return for another facinating talk, this time it's,  Female War Artists.   Michaela  gained a BA and Masters Degree in Art History from the open university after a career in the health service.  She currently teaches art history for the Workers Education Association, covering a wide range of subjects and themes with paricular interest in art of the modern period.

Michaela is also a longstanding guide at The Pallent House Gallery in Chichester.

I was born and brought up in London and have always loved this wonderful city and was therefore delighted when i initially passed the City of London exams and then the London Blue Badge Tourist Guide exams in 2001.

Though i may not be taking you on an actual walking tour of London, i hope i can give you the flavour of the area, not only looking at the history of the buildings and the streets, but also tell you stories of the area and the people to bring it alive for you in an interesting and entertaining way.

We welcome back , Tessa Boase who  read English at Lincoln College, Oxford, then worked as a voiceover artist, a childrens scriptwriter, and as a commissioning editerfor The Daily and Sunday Telegraph and The Dail Mail.

As a freelance feature writer she contributes to The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Times , The FT,  The Mail,  The Guardian, The Observer and various magazines. 

The Dancing Faun was dug up in Pompeii in 1830 and has acquired it's fame almost instantly.  Its findspot was named after it - The House of Faun.

Its completeness, small size and the rarity of surviving bronzes made it a favourite subject for reproduction in the modest gardens and interiors of aspiring aesthetes. Another feature attractive to the refined tastes of the nineteenth & twentieth centuries was that the faun seemed to be joyous rather than drunk.

A look at the beautiful works and life  of goldsmith Carl Faberge, famous for his enamel gold eggs.

We welcome back , John Benjamin, for another great talk, last year he spoke to us about Jeweller and Silversmith H G Murphy.  John has been a  BBC's Antiques Roadshow expert since 1991, lecturer, valuer and jewellery historian.

Talk: The Whistler Libel Trial.

In 1877, the Grosvenor Gallery in London exhibited Whistler's,  Nocturne in Black and Gold.  The criticism it received from John Ruskin,  lit the fuse for a landmark trial.

Prasannajit de Silva completed his doctorate in 2007, researching the art of the British in India during the late eighteenth centuries.  His lecturing covers British visual culture of the eighteenth, nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, including art produced in various settings. His work has included lecturing roles at the University of Sussex, at Birkbeck, University of London , at the WEA, and for the Arts Society. His publications include Colonial Self-Fashioning in British India, c1785-1845 : Visulising Identity and Difference (2018)

Andy will be talking about his 55 years in the jewellery & silver trade. With many stories about the places he has worked, items he has made, and the robberies that have taken place.

Andy Pescott Jeweller and Silversmith

Andy has worked for many years at Pressley's, Whibleys and Silverthornes in Worthing as a jeweller and silversmith. He has been in the Jewellery and Silver trade since 1971 as a designer, jeweller and silversmith.

We will be hosting our AGM followed by our Xmas social with food and drinks. Also you will be able to renew your memberships for 2026 now the programme has been completed .  There will also be the usual Raffle and may be a quiz, works in progress, as they say :)  Hope to see you there.

Talk:  The British Arts & Crafts Movement's popularity and development is often presented as a singular and monumental period of design history. However much of the crafts industry, in particular that of British pottery and ceramics , was highly dependant on the study of Islamic art and design. Sara will take us on a deep dive into archival collections demonstrating the behind the scenes approach taken by artisans of the era.

Dr Sara Choudhrey: Artist and researcher

Sara is a London-based artist and researcher, exploring themes of material culture, heritage and society. She references historical collections, archives and architecture with a specialism in Islamic art and digital design.

Sara holds both a Masters  (UAL, 2010) and a PhD (University of Kent, 2018) in Digital Arts.

https://www.sarachoudhrey.com/about/

Talk : An extraordinary personal collection of Edwardian coultre clothing lies in the vaults of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London,  once worn by a debutante named Heather Firbank.  When Heathers maid persuaded the museum to accecpt her former mistress's wardobe, The V&A's  Fashion &Textile department was born. 

So who was Heather ! and what secrets do her clothes yield up ?  From the country house 'Saturday - Monday' party, to the risque fashion shows of couturier Licile,  this is an intimate portrait of shopping, high society, seduction and ruin in the years leading up to the Great War.

Tessa Boase: Lecturer and author https://tessaboase.com/

Tessa is a freelance journalist, author, lecturer and campaigner with an interest in uncovering the stories of invisible women from the 19th and early 20th-centuries – revealing how they drove industry, propped up society and influenced politics.

John has a wide ranging background in Journalism, Business Consultancy, Public speaking and very importantly, Plumbing. He has written extensively for National and Regional magazines, providing satirical and lifestyle columns for the New Statesman and Italian Bike magazines respectively.  His day job is a Business Consultant.

TALK :  How far can retro go .                                                                      

Out of date,  outmoded, out of here - fashion is only predictable in as much as it is fickle and perhaps in knowing what goes around, will come around.  Is Retro really a style or just recycling - how much of it can we digest when we remember it from the first time around? was it even new then

Also has the ascendance of the male grooming and eating out replaced the attractiveness of a bloke who looks like he needs a good meal ?  It worked well for James Dean, Jim Morrison , Oliver Tobias and Frank Sinatra - what's going on ?

Michaela gained a BA and a Masters Degree in Art History from the open university after a career in the health service. She currently teaches art history for the Workers Education Associaton , covering a wide range of subjects and themes with particular interest in art of the modern period.

Michaela is also a logstanding guide at Pallent House Gallery in Chichester.

Andy Thomas lives in Midhurst & taught French & German in comprehensive schools for over thirty years. He then worked as a tour manager for a travel company, taking groups to Poland, Germany & Morocco.  For several years he has volunteered for the National Trust at Wollbeding Gardens giving talks about its history.

The talk will focus on the National Trust property of Woolbeding, near Midhurst.  It will look at the history of the house and gardens including the church, and at the poets connected to the house.

Nichola is an archivist at West Sussex Records Office, where she has worked- off and on, and in variouse guises - since joining as a volunteer in 2002. 

Other professional roles include Modern Records Archivist at the Royal Society.

Her particular interests include womans suffrage in West Sussex,  the Shippham's business of Chichester, and photographic collections.

The printed book was invented in the 1450s and looked fundamentally the same for the next 350 years: it was covered in brown leather. By 1800 all that was set to change. The industrial revolution, the influx of cheap materials from the expanding British Empire and the rise in education led to an explosion of design, colour and innovation that continues in bookshops to this day. We'll see how it all began in a series of slides and examples of the books themselves.

Jeremy Carson: Antiquarian books https://antiquarianbookcompany.com/ 

Jeremy is a professional book seller based in Brighton. Previously a special-needs teacher, in 2014 he turned his 'passion into profit' and now travels the country to antiquarian book fairs. He has written about old books and book collecting for 'Book and Magazine Collector' and has an extensive collection of Victorian books.

Sue Hepburn is a historian whose interests include the experience of the  Great War and Sussex inn signs. She is based in Arundel and works with Arundel Museum to curate exhibitions focussing on a variety of local subjects. Sue has a Masters in History from the University of Sussex.

Sue's interest in the Great War led her to research the remarkable life of Ralph  Ellis who, having survived the conflict, became a nationally renowned inn sign designer and painter from the 1920s to the 1950s. Ralph's life encapsulates some of Sue's favourite things, which include Sussex landscapes, Arundel, rural pubs and the Great War.

Laurence Fisher Mechanical music specialist

Laurence is a Mechanical Music Specialist, who spends waking hours restoring, conserving, valuing and selling all types of mechanical music - automatic-playing instruments and objects which move and/or play music from the pre-recorded sound period. These include musical boxes, both cylinder and disc, phonographs and gramophones, automata, early wireless and television, singing bird boxes and cages, pneumatic instruments such as barrel organs, and stringed instruments such as player pianos.

Aged 16, Laurence began as a porter setting up the mechanical music auctions at Phillips Auctioneers in Bayswater. Soon, he was cataloguing and valuing for sales. At 24, he became Head of Department for Mechanical Music at Christies South Kensington and following their collectors' department cull, joined Bonhams, working with Jon Baddeley in Knightsbridge.

Laurence started his own company in Eastbourne in 2016, organising annual Mechanical Music auctions and restoring automata whilst listening to early Pink Floyd.

Art Nouveau is widely considered as a revolutionary art movement which was born out of the new century. A celebration of nature and unifying artforms, this pioneering movement is oft considered decorative and indulgent. However, artist sisters Frances and Margaret Macdonald - two of the 'Glasgow Four' with their respective artist husbands, Herbert McNair and Charles Rennie Mackintosh - sought to create designs which went deeper than the surface they covered. The sisters pushed aesthetic boundaries to create deeply personal designs which were later reinterpreted and softened by the artists they inspired, such as Gustav Klimt. Featuring sometimes disturbing angular figures of nightmares or grappling with abstract concepts such as dreams and love, their designs can be considered as engaging artworks which go far beyond the decorative form they were intended for. Their 'Dandelion Clock' is, on the one hand, a practical timepiece which measures passing time, but their joint design of dandelions and owls marks it as more than a physical manifestation of an earthly concept of linear time. The natural forms and ethereal elements it the surface design of the timepiece forces it to be considered as a symbolic embodiment of the enormity of time and the impossibility of capturing it. It is one of many paradoxical artworks which the sisters made to question the idea of ‘new’ art at the turn of the century.

Sarah Hardy. Director of the De Morgan Museum.

Sarah studied Art History at Durham University before obtaining a Master's degree in  Art History at the University of Manchester. She is a specialist in Victorian art and culture and currently Director of the De Morgan Museum and a Trustee of the William Morris Society.

From the red ochre of cave paints, to the ultramarine of Titian’s skies and the vivid colours used by the Impressionists, artists have used pigments to create some of the most memorable images in the history of Western art. This talk will consider the range of materials traditionally used as a basis for paint, considering how their availability and application affected artistic production. It will also consider modern pigments and the different ways artists have responded to these newer materials.

Michaela Cranmer: Art historian and lecturer

Michaela gained a BA and a Master’s Degree in Art History from the Open University after a career in the health service. She currently teaches art history for the Workers‘ Educational Association, covering a wide range of subjects and themes with a particular interest in art of the modern period. Michaela is also a longstanding guide at Pallant House Gallery in Chichester.

Whilst perfecting Cookworthy’s patented hard paste and producing some of the finest porcelain made in the 1770’s Champion was living through turbulent times.  This talks illustrates the best of Champion’s Bristol porcelain and provides an insight into Champion’s personal problems which led eventually to a new life in America.

Champion was born into a Quaker merchant family from the Bristol area in England, the son of Joseph Champion (1714–1794), a merchant, and his wife Elizabeth Rogers (d. 1745), daughter of the merchant Francis Rogers.[1] Sarah Fox (1745–1811) the diarist, who married the banker Charles Fox of Plymouth, was his sister.[ His relations Nehemiah and William and their predecessors were involved in the manufacture of brass for several generations, initially in partnership with Abraham Darby.

After the death of his mother, Champion moved with his father, Joseph, to London where he received his education. Returning to Bristol around 1762 he worked for another uncle, Richard "Gospel" Champion who was a merchant in the city selling goods to the Caribbean and America. In this post, Richard formed relationships with traders on the east coast of America, and encountered the attitude of colonial Americans to the British government.

In 1766, Champion inherited some funds from his uncle and set up as a merchant in his own right. In 1767, he was admitted to the Society of Merchant Venturers in Bristol, and began to campaign on behalf of those involved in the American trade.

Champion's activities as a merchant involved forming relationships with prominent American counterparts, including Robert Morris of Philadelphia. Champion imported wheat from Morris and sold it in England.[7] Another was Henry Laurens of South Carolina, a prominent politician in the State. He also cultivated other important figures, writing to Benjamin Franklin and to George Washington.

Nicholas Panes English Ceramics Expert https://nicholaspanes.com/

Nicholas has been collecting and studying ceramics for over 30 years and currently collects Japanese and Chinese porcelain, English earthenwares, and portrait miniatures.  He has written two books, one on 18th century porcelain sauceboats and the second on Richard Champion and his Bristol porcelain factory.  Additionally, he has published a number of papers in the Journals of the Northern Ceramic Society and the English Ceramic Circle. Subjects range from 18th century London ceramic retailers to the application of scientific analysis to attributing ceramics. Nicholas is a former Treasurer and Honorary Vice President of the English Circle and is a past committee member of the London Ceramic Circle and the Nonsuch Ceramic Circle.

Chris Hare established History People UK in 2009, his aim was to help heritage organisations to secure funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund (now the National Lottery Heritage Fund) for the vital heritage work they were undertaking. Once funding was secured, Chris was availlable to manage these new projects: something he has been doing successfully for over 12 years.

Chris’ first project was ‘Time for History,’ with Guild Care. Since then he has managed projects for West Sussex Record Office, Worthing Borough Council, Sussex Diocese, Friends of the South Downs (South Downs Society), The Chichester Society, Worthing Heritage Alliance, Highdown Gardens, the Sidney Walter Centre, Friends of Broadwater Cemetery, and many schools across Sussex.

Jeremy Carson, Antiquarian book dealer

Clive Gravett, Curator from the Museum of Gardening

Oku Ekpenyon MBE,  Academic & Writer

Sarah Hardy, Director of the De Morgan Museum.

Lars Tharp,  BBC's Antique Roadshow expert

Nick Hall, BBC's Bargain Hunt expert & Auctioneer

Pat Kingshott, former jewel house warden