Society learns of the fine arts of the English country house
Melissa Gallimore was the guest speaker at the May meeting of the Gainsborough & District Fine Arts Society.
For some years she has worked with country house collections specialising in 18th and 19th Century interiors, furniture and ceramics, particularly as curator of decorative arts at Harewood House.
This lecture aided throughout by the architectural drawings and descriptive wit of Osbert Lancaster enabled a glimpse of life as it was lived through changing surroundings from the 17 Century Baroque, through the neo-classical and Victorian to the present day.
An irony that it was an American, Nancy Lancaster, co-founder of Colefax and Fowler, who formed what we now consider to be the English country house style, emulated across the world.