Canterbury Decorative & Fine Arts Society (CADFAS)

Founded in 2001, CADFAS (Canterbury Decorative and Fine Arts Society) was the first NZ overseas member society of The Arts Society (formerly NADFAS) in the UK. The success of the Society is built on the high quality of the monthly lectures which are given by lecturers of proven ability who are specialists in their field and are endorsed by The Arts Society. CADFAS is twinned with both the Harrogate and Brisbane River Societies.

CADFAS Programme Details

The lectures are held in the Charles Luney Auditorium, St Margaret’s College, 12 Winchester Street, at 7.30 pm on a Monday evening. They last approximately one hour and wine and sandwiches are served afterwards. Guests of current CADFAS members are most welcome ($25.00 per guest) and $15 for visiting members of other New Zealand DFAS Societies but we would appreciate their names in advance so name tags may be prepared. Please phone or text Jan Rutherford 027 227 7149 or Libby Harrop 027 473 0028.

our 2025 programme

In 2025 we offer seven accredited The Arts Society lecturers from the UK and one Australian-based lecturer. Six of these will be with us in person and two will come via live broadcast from the UK. With the online lectures, there are opportunities to view additional topics from home, tuning in to the lectures hosted by the other Societies around the country.

We hope that things will run smoothly but will be ready to adapt our programme arrangements if necessary.

Membership

Our subscription for 2025 is $150.00 per person. Subscription notices are sent out in October and are payable by 31^st October.

Returning members:  Please make payment by internet banking and ensure you include your last name and initials in the Reference field.
If you have changed any contact details please complete the CADFAS Membership Form 2025 and return to :  canterburydfas@gmail.com

New Members:  Please download the CADFAS Membership Form 2025 then complete and make your payment according to the directions on the form.

Canterbury – 2025 Lecturer Biographies and Topics

Peter McPhee

Canterbury Date : Monday 10 March 2025 – 7.30pm

Peter McPhee was appointed to a Personal Chair in History at the University of Melbourne in 1993. He had previously taught at the Victoria University of Wellington in 1980-87. He has published widely on the history of modern France, most recently Liberty or Death: the French Revolution (2016); and An Environmental History of France: Making the Landscape 1770-2020 (2024). He was appointed as the University of Melbourne’s first Provost in 2007-09. He was awarded a Centenary Medal for services to education in 2003 and became a Member of the Order of Australia in 2012. He is currently the Chair of the History Council of Victoria, the state’s peak body for history.

TWO WOMEN PAINT THE FRENCH REVOLUTION: ADÉLAÏDE LABILLE-GUILLARD & ELISABETH VIGÉE-LE BRUN

Two of the most prestigious and talented portraitists of the late-eighteenth century were Adelaïde Labille-Guiard and the court painter Elisabeth Vigée-Lebrun. While the latter was appalled by the French Revolution and decided to flee as early as October 1789, Labille-Guiard stayed in Paris, and painted the most prominent revolutionaries. She bought a country house twelve miles east of the capital in 1792 to escape the turmoil, but never disavowed the Revolution. This lecture outlines the lives and brilliant achievements of these two extraordinary women.

Christopher Garibaldi

Canterbury Date : Monday 14 April 2025 – 7.30pm

Christopher Garibaldi MA (Oxon), MBA, MPhil (Cantab), is an independent researcher and scholar. He recently completed an MPhil in the History of Art and Architecture at St John’s College, Cambridge where he is currently studying for his doctorate on aspects of the history of royal patronage.
2010–2019 Director of Palace House, Newmarket (National Heritage Centre for Horseracing and Sporting Art: 2008–2010 Co-Director of the Attingham Summer School for the Study of Historic Houses and Collections. 1998–2003 Senior Curator & Assistant Keeper of Art (Decorative Art) at Norwich Castle Museum: co-curator of Flower Power – The Meaning of Flowers in Art and Eat, Drink and Be Merry, the British at Table 1600 to 2000. 1994–1997 Catalogued the silver in the Royal Collection at Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and other royal residences.

IRMA STERN (1894-1966) – FLOWERS AND FACES OF SOUTHERN AFRICA

Irma Stern was one of the most important and influential artists to come out of South Africa in the twentieth century. A near contemporary of Munnings, her art shows some stylistic similarities although her subjects were very different. A similar concern with figurative painting was in Stern’s case directed at the production of luxurious flower paintings in the manner of Van Gogh whilst perhaps her most original achievement were the powerful portraits she painted of black African sitters in exotic locations and costumes. This lecture serves as an introduction to the art of South Africa whilst addressing important contemporary themes relating to the depiction of race, colonialism and the appropriation of African culture.

Lars Tharp

Canterbury Date : Monday 19 May 2025 – Broadcast Live from the UK – 7.30pm 

Since my 1986 debut on the BBC Antiques Roadshow (and all series since), I have spoken widely, within and beyond the UK. With over 40 years of experience in ceramics and other areas, I aim to combine several compelling narratives with enthusiasm and humour. Born in Copenhagen, I studied Archaeology at Cambridge and joined Sothebys where, as a director and auctioneer (1977-1993), I specialized in Chinese and European ceramics. Today my consultancy devises and curates exhibitions, advises on the acquisition, care and disposal of ceramics and other fields. I also speak a lot: many of my most popular talks concern the vast universe of clay and ceramics as well as the world and works of William Hogarth

THE COUNTESS, THE CAPTAIN AND THEIR 23,000 CHILDREN

Thomas Coram, a ship’s merchant who after years in Massachusetts, returned to London, resuming his paths through his former London haunts. As he passed tradesfolk dealing among piles rags discarded in the street something caught his eye. One morning, seeing a movement in one of the piles, he prodded it with his stick. It moved. A baby. Alive! In the following days and weeks, Coram criss-crossed the town’s many byways, his disbelief turning to anger. More and more bundles. Babies mostly but some alive. For the next seventeen and a half years -meticulously recorded Coram was on a mission. Unlike Continental cities, at this time England had no proper institution devoted to the saving of abandoned babies. “Something had to be done”.
Lars tells the extraordinary story bringing in Coram’s supporters including the young Charlotte Finch, Duchess of Somerset and later William Hogarth. Lars follows a narrative culminating in London’s Foundling Hospital. The many art donations made by Hogarth and his artist friends helped make this England’s first publicly funded charity, London’s first art gallery and in whose chapel each year was performed Messiah a – work written and donated by one of The Foundling’s most generous supporters, George Friderick Handel.
Lars, a former director of the Foundling, interweaves the lives of Coram, the Countess of Somerset and William Hogarth.

Note: With his online speaking circuit, Lars will be delivering a variety of unique talks to all the NZ Societies so there is an opportunity to view additional topics from home. Details and links will be sent in advance.

Chris Aslan

Canterbury Date : Monday 23 June 2025 – 7.30pm

Chris Aslan was born in Turkey and spent his childhood there and in war-torn Beirut. After school, Chris spent two years at sea before studying Media and journalism at Leicester University. He then moved to Khiva, a desert oasis in Uzbekistan, establishing a UNESCO workshop reviving fifteenth century carpet designs and embroideries, and becoming the largest non-government employer in town. He was kicked out as part of an anti-Western purge and took a year in Cambridge to write A Carpet Ride to Khiva. Chris then spent several years in the Pamirs mountains of Tajikistan, training yak herders to comb their yaks for their cashmere-like down. Next came a couple more years in Kyrgyzstan living in the world’s largest natural walnut forest and establishing a wood-carving workshop. Since then, Chris has studied and rowed at Oxford, lived in Cambridge, but is now based in a mountain village overlooking the sea in North Cyprus. Chris writes fiction and non-fiction, and his most recent book is called Unravelling the Silk Road. Chris lectures for the Art Society during the first quarter of each year, and leads tours with Indus Experiences to Central Asia, having left a large chunk of his heart there.

A CARPET RIDE TO KHIVA

Whilst this lecture will leave you knowing more than most about Persian miniatures, Timurid carpet designs and the process of rearing silkworms, it is essentially a story of how I started a silk carpet workshop in a remote desert oasis in Uzbekistan. It involves natural dye-buying in Afghanistan, dealing with corrupt officials, and seeing the way that women’s lives are transformed when they’re given the opportunity to work, and don’t have to sleep with anyone, bribe anyone, or be related to anyone in order to do so. Extremely popular, this lecture brings warmth and humanity into the world of art and textiles.

Alice Foster

Canterbury Date : Monday 28 July 2025 – 7.30pm

Alice has lectured for Oxford University, Department of Continuing Education since 1998. She lectures at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, and at the Oxfordshire Museum in Woodstock. Her busy freelance career also includes organising themed study days with colleagues, and regular weekly classes in Oxfordshire and Worcestershire. In 2004 Alice joined The Arts Society and has lectured in Great Britain and Europe. Formerly President of Northleach Arts Society, she is also President of Banbury Fine Arts Society. Since its inception in 2003 Alice has led study holidays with Learn Italy Ltd to Italy and other parts of Europe. In 2024 she joined the team at the Argyll Hotel, Isle of Iona, Scotland, and runs History of Art Study weeks, specialising in the work of Scottish artists.

THE SCOTTISH COLOURISTS

In the early twentieth century Samuel Peploe, J.D. Fergusson, F.C.B. Cadell and G.Leslie Hunter were never a cohesive movement but they were united by their love of colour and light, and their love of Scotland and France. Trained professionally in Edinburgh, they too rejected the dour atmosphere of Edinburgh for places such as the magical island of Iona on the west coast of Scotland, Paris, and the strong light in the south of France. Their subjects were new and exciting, their brushwork freer than previously known in Edinburgh and today they are applauded for fusing elements of Scottish heritage with aspects of the Parisian avant-garde.

Pamela Campbell-Johnson

Canterbury Date : Monday 1 September 2025 – broadcast live from the UK – 7.30pm

With an MA Hons Art History, St Andrew’s University, Pamela has over 30 years of lecturing experience to undergraduates, adult groups, and to Friends and Patrons of the Royal Academy of Arts as part of the RA’s Adult Education Department. She has also conducted numerous guided tours, residential trips and focused gallery talks on individual works of art. Specialising in British Domestic Architecture and Modern British Art – Pamela has a particular love for the 1920s and 1930s. She’s had permanent career at Royal Academy of Arts for 12 years and work experience also undertaken at Bonhams, Art Loss Register and National Trust. Now a freelance art consultant and lecturer, she recently curated a collection for the Lansdowne Club.

ART DECO: CELEBRATING THE CENTENARY OF THE 1925 PARIS EXPO

In 1925, nearly 16 million people visited Paris’s Expo – The International Exhibition of Modern, Decorative and Industrial Arts. What would we have seen in this landmark exhibition if we had been one of those visitors? What drew the crowds? And how did this seminal exhibition play a fundamental role in giving rise to a new international and truly global style that we know as Art Deco? We study key exhibits from the Expo by celebrated artists, craftsmen and architects, including Rulhmann, Lalique Pompon, Brandt and Mallet Stevens, as well as reviewing the various Nations’ Pavilions.

Note: With her online speaking circuit, Pamela will be delivering a variety of unique talks to all the NZ Societies so there is an opportunity to view additional topics from home. Details and links will be sent in advance.

Clare Blatherwick

Canterbury Date : Monday 13 October 2025 – 7.30pm

Clare Blatherwick is an independent jewellery consultant based in Scotland. She has over twenty-five years of experience in the jewellery business, ten of which were spent as Head of Jewellery for Bonhams in Scotland, a role which saw her travel internationally searching for wonderful jewels to be auctioned around the globe. She has a keen interest in the historical aspect of jewellery and has lectured extensively on her subject both in the UK and internationally, including Europe, South Africa and Australia. She has also appeared on various TV programmes in the UK and US as a jewellery expert. Clare is a member of The Society of Jewellery Historians.

THE STORY OF JEWELLERY IN SCOTLAND

From Mary Queen of Scots and her attendants (the ‘Four Marys’) to the modern day, this talk looks at the jewels of a nation made famous through Queen Victoria’s love of the country and its applied arts. Dipping in to some of the jewels in public and private collections as well as those jewels depicted in portraits, the talk covers more than the well-known ‘pebble’ jewels of the late 19th century and provides a great insight into the proud history of the nation’s goldsmithing and the story of jewellery and personal adornment in Scotland.

Anne Sebba

Canterbury Date : Monday 17 November 2025 – 7.30pm

Anne Sebba FRSL is the prize-winning author of ELEVEN books including the best-selling biography THAT WOMAN, a life of Wallis Simpson based on her discovery of 15 unpublished letters locked away in an attic trunk. Her next book was Les Parisiennes: How the Women of Paris Lived, Loved and Died in the 1940’s about a wide variety of women and how they behaved in wartime Paris published in the US, UK, China, France and the Czech Republic, winner of the Franco-British award. She has also written biographies of Jennie Churchill, Mother Teresa and Laura Ashley among others.
She makes regular television appearances and has presented programmes for BBC R3 and R4 including two about the pianists, Harriet Cohen and Joyce Hatto. She began her working career as a foreign correspondent for Reuters news agency, the first woman accepted on their graduate trainee scheme, and has also worked for the BBC world services in their Arabic department, although she does not speak a word of Arabic. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature, a senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Historical Research, a Trustee of the National Archives Trust and a former chair of Britain’s 10,000 strong Society of Authors Management Committee.
Her most recent book is a life of Ethel Rosenberg, electrocuted in 1953 aged 37 for conspiracy to commit espionage following a trial with multiple miscarriages of justice, optioned by Miramax and shortlisted for the Wingate Prize. She is currently writing about the Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz, due for publication in March 2025, the 80TH anniversary of the liberation of the camps and also works as a reviewer, journalist, after dinner speaker and lecturer for the Arts Society as well as various other institutions and schools in the UK and US including the British Library, Royal Oak, English Speaking Union and the National Trust.

JENNIE CHURCHILL – STYLE ICON, PUSHY MOTHER OR AMBITIOUS SEDUCTRESS?

Jennie Jerome, (1854 – 1921) was born in America with a belief that it was her destiny to make a great marriage and achieve something in the world. She learnt in Paris as a teenager the importance of dressing well and being noticed often dressing up often in outrageous outfits. In 1874, aged 20, she married Lord Randolph Churchill thinking she was making a glittering marriage. When it turned out otherwise she threw all her energies into her son Winston, her No1 creative project – and great love – throughout her life. However, in an age when women were expected not to earn a living she soon discovered she had to do just that. She wrote plays, founded magazines and indulged in projects that lost money. Eventually she hit upon a method of tapping into her natural good taste which succeeded; she bought and sold houses, redesigning the interior. But all the while she defended, supported and promoted her beloved first son Winston. Jennie Churchill has been treated unfairly as a woman who had 200 lovers but in the 21st century, 100 years since Jennie’s tragically premature death, surely time to re-evaluate her legacy. Are American women like Meghan, Duchess of Sussex, still misunderstood?