Free to attend (registration essential). Also Online, via Zoom.
With Jan Marsh, Alan Powers and Dr Elizabeth Darling
In this free online event, discover the history of two of the houses featured in our current exhibition, Architects’ Houses, Red House and 2 Willow Road.
Biographer and art historian Jan Marsh, a leading expert on William Morris, will discuss Red House, the home he designed in collaboration with architect Philip Webb and decorated with his close circle including Jane Morris, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rosetti, Elizabeth Siddal and Charles Faulkner. She will describe how it was not only a home for his family but a crucible for the Arts and Crafts movement. Historian and curator Alan Powers will introduce 1-3 Willow Road, a modernist terrace of houses designed by Ernő Goldfinger, including his own at number 2. He will discuss the creation of a family home, conceived initially as a didactic manifesto along the lines of Red House, but which in reality needed to be toned down to suit living with two children and to conform to London County Council regulations. The event will be moderated by Dr Elizabeth Darling, Reader in Architectural History at Oxford Brookes University.
About the speakers
Jan Marsh is a past president of the William Morris Society and wrote the first Red House guidebook for the National Trust. A biographer and curator, her exhibitions include Black Victorians and Pre-Raphaelite Sisters, which featured Janey Morris. Her most recent book is on Elizabeth Siddal.
Alan Powers is a historian and curator specialising in mid twentieth century British art, architecture and design. He was involved in helping the National Trust to acquire 2 Willow Road, and wrote the guidebook, as well as appearing in the introductory film. His monograph on Goldfinger in the series Twentieth Century Architects, written jointly with the late Elain Harwood, will be published by Liverpool University Press in January 2024. He teaches at the London School of Architecture, New York University in London and the University of Kent. He was born and brought up in Hampstead close to the Goldfinger house.
Dr Elizabeth Darling is Reader in Architectural History in the School of History, Philosophy & Culture, Oxford Brookes University, UK. Her work focuses on gender, space and reform in the 1890s-1940s, and the genesis and nature of English modernism between the wars; and sometimes the intersections between the two. Her publications include Women and the Making of Built Space in England 1870-1950 (Ashgate, 2007), Re-forming Britain, Narratives of Modernity before Reconstruction (Routledge, 2007), Wells Coates (RIBA Publishing, 2012) and Suffragette City: Gender, Politics and the Built Environment (Routledge 2020).
About the Event
This event is taking place on Zoom. Register in advance at the link above.
You can ask questions on the night using the Q&A function, although we are unable to guarantee which questions will be covered due to time constraints.
