Our speaker will be Matthew Martin from Melbourne University.  Matthew's topic will be ‘Sacred Ceramics: Meissen devotional sculptures for the Saxon Court.’

Matthew is an art historian and curator with a particular interest in the luxury arts of the European long eighteenth century. From 2006 to 2019 he was a curator in the department of International Decorative Arts in the National Gallery of Victoria. Matthew's research interests include: Eighteenth-century European Decorative arts; the historiography of the decorative arts and their display in museums; the cultural aesthetics of eighteenth-century European porcelain and the medium's connections to the European alchemical tradition; collecting and patronage amongst seventeenth and eighteenth-century recusant elites; Jacobite material culture.

We'll hold our Annual General Meeting and a Show & Tell on the theme of ‘Sacred and Profane’. Perhaps you will draw inspiration from Matthew’s presentation, perhaps you have a pagan secret you’d like to share, perhaps you have something that defies explanation. Please bring it along.