Huguenot Refugee Art and Culture

This talk will illustrate the extraordinary international networks resulting from the diaspora of more than 200,000 refugees who left France in the late seventeenth century to join communities already in exile spread far and wide. First-generation Huguenot refugees included hundreds of trained artists, designers and craftsmen. Beyond the French borders, they raised the quality of design and workshop practice, passing on skills to their apprentices; sons, godsons, cousins, and to successive generations, who continued to dominate output in the luxury trades. Although silver and silks are the best-known fields with which Huguenot settlers are associated, their significant contribution to architecture, ceramics, design, clock and watchmaking, engraving, furniture, woodwork, sculpture, portraiture, and art education provides fascinating insight into the motivation and resolve of this highly skilled diaspora. Thanks to a sophisticated network of Huguenot merchants, retailers, and bankers who financed their production, their wares reached a global market.

Tessa Murdoch is Research Curator, Rosalinde and Arthur Gilbert Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum. Her forthcoming V&A book on Huguenot Refugee Art and Culture 1530-1780 (to be published in October 2021) was her focus as Getty Rothschild Fellow 2019 in Los Angeles and Waddesdon. Tessa has forty years curatorial experience at the Museum of London from 1981 and at the V&A since 1990 where she has worked in the Furniture, Sculpture, Metalwork and Ceramics Collections. Tessa is a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, a trustee of the Huguenot Museum, Rochester and of the Idlewild Trust.

The talks starts at 6.30pm. Joining details will be sent to attendees the day before.