– design influences on early Bedford Park house interiors
Online lecture: Contact us to see the recording

Original William de Morgan wallpaper design: Double Boughs 1890-92
Bedford Park pioneers of the 1870s and 80s were not wealthy, but typically liked to think of themselves as having good taste and a sense of the beautiful.
In this lecture, Nicholas Friend explores what this might have meant, and the kind of decoration considered appropriate for the house of an artistically minded Bedford Park family at that time.
He looks at the designs of William Morris, Japanese furnishings, Liberty’s, the Aesthetic Movement, the Queen Anne movement, Art Nouveau and the Arts and Crafts Movement, considering how these ideas and practices may have influenced Bedford Park pioneers, and how these sources may still be useful in furnishing a Bedford Park house today.
The talk including questions will last approximately one hour.
Image on home page: Anglo-Japanese furniture designs by EW Godwin
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Nicholas Friend MA (Oxon) MA (Cantab) FRSA

After working as Staff Tutor in art history for the extra-mural department of Cambridge University, Nicholas Friend was appointed Founder-Director of the Cambridge University Art History Summer School and continued in that post for 25 years.
Since 1986 he has also been Founder-Director of Inscape, the art history study tour society, which has taken its members into the active study of buildings and art galleries all over the world from Istanbul to New Mexico.
Since Covid’s lockdown of study group travel, he has been giving an extensive series of Zoom lectures on architecture, painting and the decorative arts. His interest in Bedford Park coincides with lecturing in late 19c British architecture and design for Sotheby’s Institute and elsewhere, together with his membership of the Victorian Society and William Morris Society. He chaired the latter Society’s Committee to celebrate the centenary of William Morris’ ‘News From Nowhere.’ He is an active Companion of Ruskin’s Guild of St George.