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A la Ronde Symposium - ''The Feather'd Fair': women, femininity and feathers in the 1790's'

Lucy Powell presenting a paper at the A la Ronde Symposium
Lucy Powell, A la Ronde Symposium | © National Trust / Richard Gregory

On 11th July 2024 we held our Symposium, entitled ‘Female Craft and Design in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries’. Held at Reed Hall, University of Exeter, we invited a wide range of people to share stories about A la Ronde and how it connects to the wider world. This paper ''The Feather'd Fair': women, femininity and feathers in the 1790's’ was presented by Dr Lucy Powell, as part of the panel 'Decorative historic interiors and material histories'.

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'The Feather'd Fair': women, femininity and feathers in the 1790's

Lucy Powell presented her paper ''The Feather'd Fair': women, femininity and feathers in the 1790's' at the A la Ronde symposium 2024.

Biography: Dr Lucy Powell

Lucy Powell is a Leverhulme ECR fellow at the University of Oxford. Her project, "'The Feather'd Tribe: Birds and the Routes of Empire in the Eighteenth Century" explores the ways in which birds and feathered objects enabled British writers and artists to forge a global imaginary in the eighteenth century.

Her first monograph, which is forthcoming in 2025 with Cambridge University Press, is entitled Prison and the Novel in Eighteenth-Century Britain: Form and Reform. She is also a New Generation Thinker for the BBC and AHRC and has presented programmes across the BBC network on everything from the art and science of silence to a cultural history of dreams. She has featured on Channel 4 as a specialist on Restoration theatre, and her writing has appeared in Eighteenth-Century Life, Life Writing, The Times, The Sunday Times, and The Guardian, among others.

The interior of the cabinet of curiosities in the Library at A la Ronde, Devon.
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Exhibition

The Compendium 

The Compendium is a collection of stories to delight and surprise. You can explore all things A la Ronde here in one central place for the first time. We will be adding new stories for years to come.

A crowd during one of the presentations at the Symposium. A la Ronde, Devon.
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The Symposium 

On 11th July 2024, A la Ronde hosted its first academic conference, ‘The Symposium: Female Craft and Design in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries’. Learn more about the day here.

Dan Maudlin presenting a paper at the A la Ronde Symposium
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Article

A la Ronde Symposium - 'Making Cottages: Rural Retreat and the Appropriation of the Vernacular in the C18th' 

On 11th July 2024 we held A la Ronde's Symposium, entitled ‘Female Craft and Design in the Eighteenth and Early Nineteenth Centuries’. This paper 'Making Cottages: Rural Retreat and the Appropriation of the Vernacular in the C18th' was presented as the keynote address by Professor Daniel Maudlin. Learn more about the paper here.