“O PAXTON!” – HOW CHATSWORTH’S VICTORIAN GENIUS JOSEPH PAXTON CAME TO PUT THE WORLD UNDER GLASS (THE CRYSTAL PALACE)

Paxton was one of the most inventive and influential figures of the 19th century. His most famous masterwork, the Crystal Palace of 1851, is considered by significant contemporary architects to be ’the birth of modern architecture’. For more than 30 years he worked at Chatsworth enhancing it with innovative buildings and garden designs in a close partnership with his patron the 6th Duke of Devonshire. His boundless energy and vision found its greatest expression in his radical design for the Great Exhibition, where the ‘industry of all nations', and a dazzled populace, gathered under his vast glass structure.

How to book this event:

Please contact Ruth Ford on 01606 872689 / 07871 769432 or email guests@tastarporley.uk

THE ARTS SOCIETY ACCREDITED LECTURER

Mr Simon Seligman

Having grown up wanting to be an architect, Simon studied art and architectural history at Warwick University, which included a compulsory term living in Venice, from which he is still recovering! For 19 years until 2010, he worked at the great treasure house of Chatsworth, in Derbyshire, in a variety of roles, starting with a summer job cleaning lavatories and car parking, and ending as Head of Communications. In that time he lectured extensively about Chatsworth, the Devonshire Collection and associated topics, throughout the UK and on several US tours, and he continues to lecture on a growing range of cultural topics. Since then he has fulfilled another passion by training as a Life Coach, working with people one-to-one to support their life and career choices, and he also works part time for John Ruskin’s charity the Guild of St George. For more than 30 years he has lived with his family in the heart of Derbyshire's beautiful Peak District.