Lots to talk about at LAPADA

The LAPADA Fair, running from September 15-20 at Berkeley Square in London, will host an extensive programme of talks and events alongside the exceptional array of antiques and art displayed by over 110 exhibitors.

The Headline Lecture, presented by the Fair’s Cultural Partner the Ashmolean Museum, will centre around the museum’s upcoming exhibition, ‘Imagining the Divine: Art and the Rise of World Religions’. Presented by the show’s lead curator, Stefanie Lenk, the talk will explore the art of the five major world religions as they spread across the continents in the first millennium AD.

The Headline Lecture will sit alongside a series of other events proudly supported by the 2017 Talks &
Tours Partner, The Arts Society. Award-winning food historian, Tasha Marks, will open the programme with an immersive workshop offering an ‘Introduction to Renaissance Sugar Sculpture’. For many during the Renaissance, the dinner table held as much splendour and spectacle as any painting or sculpture. Nowhere was this more apparent than when serving dessert, where sugar was considered ‘an artistic medium of tremendous flexibility’. During the workshop visitors will create their own sculpture using a 17th-century sugar paste recipe, and learn about how individuals could assert
power, politics and status through dessert.

On Sunday 17th September, LAPADA Fair exhibitor Rebecca Hossack will offer insight into the colourful history of Aboriginal art. Visitors will be taken on a journey from the origins of Aboriginal art in ancient ceremonial designs through to the emerging talent of contemporary Aboriginal artists exhibited on Rebecca Hossack’s stand. Later in the afternoon, Apollo editor Thomas Marks will lead a tour in which he picks out his favourite artworks and objects in the Fair that relate to the history of London – and to its many artistic triumphs and traditions.

Next up is antique dealer and broadcaster Mark Hill, who will be ‘Undressing Antiques’ by providing
a persuasive introduction to buying antiques and integrating them into today’s homes. He will consider the current state of the market, the different ways we can attribute meaning to the word ‘value’ and what the future generation of collectors are now purchasing.

Experts from Newby Teas, LAPADA’s official tea sponsor, will be hosting ‘The Heritage of Flavour’, an
intimate tea tasting in which guests will have the opportunity to sample the world’s finest teas, learn
how to brew the perfect cup and learn about the cultural inspiration behind the Classic Tea Bag
Collection.

Rounding up 2017’s exciting events programme is writer, broadcaster and independent jewellery
consultant, John Benjamin, who will present ‘A History of Jewellery from Elizabeth I to Elizabeth
Taylor’, exploring four hundred years of international jewellery design and examining the changing
styles, techniques, periods and genres that contribute to our vast jewellery heritage.

All the public talks are free of charge and can be booked by emailing talks@lapada.org; additional information related to the talks programme is available on www.lapadalondon.com/talks.