 |
Amanda Baird - Biography
|
Amanda's artistic career of 32 years has been varied. She has painted walls and ceilings as a trompe l’oeilist and muralist and launched a range of hand painted boxes and trays. Her work has been featured on television and in magazines such as The World of Interiors, Country Living, House and Garden and The Saturday Telegraph; her boxes and trays, painted in the trompe l’oeil style, have been exhibited and sold at major London shows. Although self-taught, Amanda has learned much from her Mother, who is also a professional artist.
|
In addition to this work, Amanda somehow finds time to run a specialist catering business and her fabulously exquisite wedding cakes, which are decorated in the same painterly style with hand sculpted and painted flowers, leaves and roses, are featured regularly in Conde Nast Brides and Cosmo Bride Magazines.
Amanda's work often involves restoration of period paintings and furniture and she is familiar with traditional materials and finishes. She has travelled with her work extensively. In 2003 she was delighted to be asked by Peter Smalley to decorate a harpsichord soundboard in a traditional 18th Century manner. This unusual commission was ideally suited to Amanda’s traditional skills, her influence from old Dutch masters and her love of nature is reflected in her beautiful paintings of birds, butterflies and flowers. Since then their collaboration has continued.
By an amazing coincidence (or possibly not….?), Amanda is a direct descendant of John Broadwood, founder of the famous harpsichord & piano-making family firm, who married the daughter of his master Burkat Shudi, a Swiss harpsichord maker working in London.
During the 18th Century the Shudi – Broadwood combination represented the zenith of English harpsichord making and whose customers included Handel and members of the Royal families of England and Prussia. |
