Hi Friends: I am delighted to let you know that I will be presenting an illustrated lecture, “Victoriana 1930,” to the Victorian Society in America, Northern New Jersey Chapter, in Montclair on Monday October 16th 2023. The event will be held at 7:00pm at the historic Montclair Women’s Club, 82 Union Street, and the lecture will be followed by a reception. The lecture explores the Victorian revival in 1930s interior design: “In 1930, a Victorian revival was stirring among avant-garde tastemakers who just a few years earlier were devotees of the geometric deco aesthetic or the clinical chrome, glass and plain white walls of modernism. For these cutting-edge trend-setters, Victoriana was so far out that it was suddenly in. A pronounced neo-Victorian aesthetic was soon also championed by interior decorators and homemakers. The Victorian revival in the 1930's was not simply an attempt to recreate historically accurate period décor. For fashionable style-setters, mid-19th Century style was an explicit challenge to the modernist machine aesthetic, placing fantastic Victorian design elements within a modernist setting, achieving a juxtaposition that revealed a Surrealist undercurrent in interior design.” Amongst the leaders of this trend were Helena Rubinstein, Charles de Besteigui, Juliana Force, Millicent Rogers, Bernard Boutet de Monvel, Salvador Dali and Pavel Tchelitchew. The lectures explores these figures, their fashions in interiors and art and the ideas behind them. From Manhattan’s Pennsylvania Station it is a 1 hour train ride on New Jersey transit directly to Montclair (the excellent Montclair Art Museum is also worth a visit but is only open Friday, Saturday and Sunday). I hope you will join us.