11 January 2012: Jo Mabbutt - "Gilded Glories"

Jo Mabbutt began her talk with a history of gilding from Tutankhamen’s death mask, through 16th century Italian risottos, palatial gilded interiors and exteriors, and Gustav Klimt’s erotic 'Golden Period' paintings to Richard Wright, the latest Turner Prize winner and 21st century designer food and alcohol.

Jo Mabbutt

Jo describes herself as "a decorative artist specialising in experimental surface decoration, combining gilding with print and hand painting". She works on a variety of surfaces, from paper to textiles to glass, and is currently developing ranges of gilded jewellery, fashion and interior accessories.

Jo Mabbutt

Lace is Jo’s inspiration and main material; she says "using antique and vintage lace to refashion into precious pieces appeals to me. Intuitive exploration with materials has resulted in contemporary surface treatments, which give my pieces a new fragility with jewel-like qualities".

Jo Mabbutt

14 December 2011 - Christmas Social

The day of our December meeting was really inclement with blustery winds and wintery showers. Given the awful weather and the fact that we don’t have a speaker in December is was delightful to see such a splendid turn out for our Winter Social Evening. When I say splendid I refer not only to the number of members who braved the elements but also to their ‘party cloths’.

After the business part of the meeting and the raffle (thanks to everyone who donated prizes) we enjoyed a bring-and-share super and a glass or two of mulled non-wine and spiced fruit juice. We then exercised our brains with a light hearted, two part quiz. The first part was a set of dingbats to be solved, the second a list of Christmas songs and carols to be identified from the initial letters of the titles. Easier said than done and judging by the groans when the answers were read out, we all thought that we should have identified a few more than we had. However, the winning table had done extremely well and won by a short mile.

The highlight of the evening was our 22 additional guests – the fairies made for the competition. We were given a sheet of basic instructions for ‘Disco Donna’ and asked to make a fairy version. The entries were very different and all wonderful.









The winner was chosen by a coin vote.


Congratulations to Karen Rowe who not only won the competition but also first prize in the Raffle.