Winter Lecture: Falling in love with design – Ken Stradling and the Bristol Guild
Join curator Cleo Witt to find out about Ken Stradling and the Bristol Guild in the first Winter Lecture of the season.
Ken Stradling was the Bristol Guild, an absolute treasure house of design and craft which he created single-handedly in Park Street and which is still there today.
This is his story – a Bristol one through and through. From his childhood in Totterdown attending Bristol Grammar School, through to his last years in his Hotwells house, his life was based in Bristol, making friends and connections through his passion for design and craft.
Ken spent 60 amazing years at the Bristol Guild selling everything for the home, chosen with his unerring eye for quality and fun. It’s an extraordinary story of travel, friendship and success – now enshrined in the collection he found he had accumulated on retirement, established as a trust to inspire and delight visitors and students.
Find out more about this delicious collection and its enthusiastic and warm-hearted creator – born, brought up in and devoted to Bristol – in this illustrated lecture.
Speaker: Cleo Witt is a museum curator, lecturer and educator who is passionate about design and particularly this wonderful collection, of which she is a trustee. She has recently curated exhibitions on The Bauhaus in Bristol and this year Ken Stradling’s centenary exhibition, A Lifelong Passion for Design. Her publications range from 18th century costume to French Art Nouveau through Bristol ceramics and glass.
How to take part
Thanks to the generous sponsorship from the Friends of Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives , this season’s Winter Lectures will be held on person at M Shed and online via Zoom.
If you are attending in-person, please arrive 15 minutes before the start time to take your seat. Parking in the area can be difficult so you may want to allow extra time to find a space if you are driving to the venue.
If you are attending online, this lecture will take place over Zoom. Details of how to join the session will be in your registration email.
Book tickets
Tickets are ‘pay what you can’.
Please select whether you require an ‘online’ or an ‘in-person’ ticket when you book. Booking for online tickets closes at 3pm on Thursday 13 October.
All funds raised support the work of Bristol Museums.
Additional information
About the Winter Lectures
Bristol Museums have delivered a Winter Lecture Series between October and April every year since 1948. Past speakers have included many of the leading experts of their time and some famous faces.
Today, the Winter Lectures are sponsored by the Friends of Bristol Museums, Galleries & Archives and are open to all. Lectures are all connected in some way to Bristol Museum’s amazing collections and cover a range of subjects including geology, natural history, archaeology, art and world cultures.
