… as we announce the final fixture in our autumn programme and our new YouTube channel!

Well this is exciting…

I’m delighted to announce the course which completes our autumn programme - and utterly thrilled to announce that it comes with a chance to win a fabulous and unique prize!

For reasons which will soon become apparent, our final autumn offering features beautiful glass-work:

Art Nouveau Glass Masters: Tiffany, Gallé, and their contemporaries

We’ve long had an Art Nouveau Short & Sweet course on the cards, with a view to offering you some dazzling iridescence to brighten up long winter days at some point. But then the stars aligned and we decided that it had to be now!

The headline news is:

Everyone who registers for this course will be entered into a prize draw to win this beautiful bracelet - which is custom-made for one lucky Denizen of Wright History.

How amazing is that?!

This is courtesy of the lovely Joy McMillan, of The Glass of Joy - a Harrogate-based business creating lampwork glass jewellery and objects - thank you so much, Joy!

[NB To further whet your appetite, see here for more images of Joy’s bracelets.]

The three of us met on a course for new businesses, and quickly realized that a collaboration of some sort was inevitable: Joy was interested in the history of Viking glass-making; we were eager to learn more about the practicalities of glass-making, the better to understand Viking material culture.

Inspired by what she’s learnt about Viking tastes and how they sourced their raw materials, Joy designed and made some beautiful Viking-inspired beads. And because she’s lovely, she’s gifted them to us, to gift unto one of you!

Inspired by what we’d learnt about modern glass-making, our long-planned Art Nouveau course had to have a glass focus, didn’t it? Although most of the glass masters you’ll meet in our December course are not primarily lampworkers, what they do have in common with Joy - and, indeed, with Viking glass-workers - is an emphasis on recycling (i.e. repurposing older materials to make beautiful shiny things for current artistic purposes).

…And all of this inspiration created still more inspiration, which leads to our next piece of news <unleashes the drum-rolling hound>…

Ladies and gentlemen…

…We have a YouTube channel!

No really! And nobody is more surprised than I am!

It’s something we’ve long eschewed (for various reasons, with which I shan’t bore you). But we found chatting with Joy about things Viking- and glass-related so very enlightening that we all wanted to share the mutual insights, and YouTube seemed the best place in which to do so.

Joy’s given us so much useful information for our upcoming The Viking Age course, and kindly agreed to let us record an informal conversation so that our current Vikings Denizens might also enjoy it. And Joy felt that her customers and fellow glass-makers might value an historical perspective on glass-making… so hello YouTube!

We’ve just published a Cultures of Histories post, which discusses the mutual benefits of historical understanding and modern practice-based experience, and a little more about our conversation with Joy here.

If you’d prefer to head straight to our YouTube channel - and, perhaps, chuckle at how palpably uncomfortable Robert and I are with putting ourselves, rather than historical content, in the spotlight - you’ll find what I now know I should call our channel trailer here.

If you could subscribe and/or post a comment, we’d be really grateful, as that would nudge us a little more into the sights of the algorithm gods - thus hopefully bringing us to the attention of new potential Denizens.

We’ve got some ideas as to what we might do on this channel - including snippets of previous courses, to give everyone an idea of what a Wright History course looks like. Was there a specific part of a course which particularly blew you away which we should include?

And what would you like to see there? Would you, for example, be interested in more “In conversation with…” videos? Do please let us know!

Phew! As you can see, we’ve been working hard since the end of last term, and we hope that you approve of what we’ve been up to!

For those of you who have not yet booked your autumn entertainments with us, please note that we’re starting term a little earlier than some of your alternative course providers are. This is so that we have a longer run over Christmas to prepare the first batch of our 2024 programme (on which, more in due course. Watch this space!). This means that our ten-weekers will have “half” term after six weeks, rather than the traditional five, to cater to those of you with, e.g., grandparenting duties during standard half-term dates.

And yes: I am indeed sorry to be mentioning October/November - let alone January! - now that we finally have some Proper British Summer weather! So glossing over that speedily… to see all courses currently available, please click here.

Finally, I’m chuffed to announce that Joy has offered all Denizens of Wright History a generous 10% discount at The Glass of Joy.

Enter this code when you order:

WrightHistory10

Personally, I’m thinking that we might treat ourselves to a set of her icicles or cocktail stirrers, but maybe we should consider commissioning a booking elf one day…?!

PS For Terms & Conditions of the prize draw, please see the Art Nouveau Glass Masters course page here.