The Peter Dormer Lecture

Organised by a committee of his friends and colleagues and hosted by the Royal College of Art, the lecture aims to continue the debate about applied art and society that was central to Dormer’s concerns.

Peter Dormer’s writings embraced art, architecture, design, technology and education, and his critical and curatorial work helped to promote the crafts into the free-flowing currents of postmodern visual culture. This connectivity is something these lectures celebrate and promote – previous speakers have embraced architecture, ceramics and modernism, the implications of digital technology, craft history and criticism, and design innovation. 

Peter Dormer (1949–96) trained in art at Bath Academy of Art and in philosophy at Bristol University. After a short career in education, he joined the staff of Crafts magazine under the editorship of Martina Margetts. By that time, he had already started writing about the applied arts. He later left Crafts to become a full-time writer and exhibition curator and developed his thinking in applied art, design, and architecture, the connections between them and their role in society. Among his exhibitions were Fast Forward (ICA, 1985) and Beyond the Dovetail (Crafts Council, 1991), both polemical exhibitions on the nature of the new and the traditional in crafts and the search for critical criteria. For Thames and Hudson he wrote the New series – starting with The New Jewelry (with Ralph Turner) and including The New Furniture and The New Ceramics. One of his last books was also on jewellery — Jewelry of our Time: Art, Ornament, and Obsession — written with Helen W Drutt-English, the Philadelphia collector. He also wrote about and curated exhibitions on design and architecture, writing The Meanings of Modern Design in 1990 and Design since 1945 in 1993. Peter Dormer was notable among critics for being appreciated by makers, and one of his persistent interests was in understanding the nature of skill and how it is learnt, used, and judged. This is the theme of The Art of the Maker (1994), one of his most important books, based on a PhD he did at the RCA.

The Peter Dormer Lecture Committee organises the annual lecture and raises funds and current members are: Dr Tanya Harrod (Chair), Jane Smith (Secretary), Helen Drutt English, Grant Gibson, Dr Stephen Knott, Nicholas Rena, Professor Hans Stofer, Dr Claire Pajaczkowska, Dr Catharine Rossi, Clare Twomey and Ellis Woodman.

The Committee is grateful to the Royal College of Art for its support in hosting the annual lecture, to private donors, and occasional financial support from the Crafts Council.

Helen Drutt, 2024
Gus Casely-Hayford, 2023
Mònica Gaspar, 2022
Deirdre Figueiredo, 2020
Jenni Sorkin, 2019
Tom Emerson & Stephanie Macdonald, 2018
Alun Graves, 2017
Alison Britton, 2016
Cecil Balmond, 2015
Daniel Charny, 2014
Martina Margetts, 2013
Grayson Perry, 2012
Dr Jorunn Veiteberg, 2011
Dr Julia Bryan-Wilson, 2010
Professor Edward S. Cooke, Jr, 2009
Saul Griffith, 2008
Dr Glenn Adamson, 2007
Richard Wentworth, 2006
Alan Powers, 2005
Jeremy Myerson, 2004
Malcolm McCullough, 2003
Edmund de Waal, 2002
Rosemary Hill, 2001
Marjan Unger, 2000
Ellen Dissanayake, 1999Tanya Harrod, 1998
Charles Jencks, 1997