The Annual General Meeting will commence at 2.30pm followed by refreshments and a lecture - with Dr. Laura Mayer 'Chinoiserie - Tea, Trade Routes and a Taste for the Exotic' commencing at 3.00PM.

Chinoiserie, an early European interest in the arts of the Far East, blossomed in Georgian Britain. It encompassed everything from furniture design and ceramics, to gardening and garden buildings. Soon, every landscape park in the country had a pagoda or tea-house; a Chinese bridge, barge or brightly painted ‘umbrella’ under which to take tea, that most fashionable of imported luxuries.

This lecture examines the expanding trade routes of eighteenth-century Britain, as well as the craze for informal gardening ‘without line or level’, which had been gaining traction since William Temple’s 1685 appraisal of East Asian garden asymmetry. It considers the full spectrum of structural accuracy to be found within British Chinoiserie, and ultimately questions just how English was the English landscape garden, after all?

Biography: Dr. Laura Mayer

Laura Mayer is an independent lecturer, writer and researcher. Originally an art historian with a side of Spanish, she accidentally fell into garden history whilst working at the Alhambra in Granada. She has an MA in Garden History and a PhD in eighteenth-century architectural and landscape patronage, both from the University of Bristol. Laura has published extensively – particularly on Lancelot ‘Capability’ Brown and Humphry Repton – as well as on the historic gardens of Cambridgeshire. Laura lectures regularly for Cambridge University Botanic Gardens and the Gardens Trust, and works as a conservation consultant for the National Trust and Land & Heritage. Laura lives in Bristol, in a lilac-and-blue Georgian house which she wishes had Granada’s weather - and a proper garden.

Price for the lecture - Members £12.00, Guests £16.00. Members attending the AGM alone are free.

Further details of all AGT events may be obtained from Peter Hills - events@avongardenstrust.org.uk or phone 07748507166