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January 1997

Vol. 139 | No. 1126

Silver and Metalwork

Editorial

Opening Doors with Silver Keys

1996 was a momentous year for silver in Britain. In June it was announced that the Gilbert Collection of gold, silver, pietre dure and micro-mosaics would be permanently housed and opened to the public at Somerset House. At the end of November the new Silver Gallery at the Victoria and Albert Museum was inaugurated, the first re-presentation of that collection since the early 1950s. To celebrate this dawn of a silver age, we are presenting in this issue articles devoted to objects made of, or finished with precious metals.

 

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  • Archbishop Matthew Parker's Gifts of Plate to Cambridge

    By Helen Clifford

    Matthew Parker is best known for his pivotal role as Archbishop of Canterbury during the Reformation and for his munificent donations of manuscripts and books: he gave over five hundred volumes to Corpus Christi, his old college in Cambridge, under business-like conditions to ensure that his gift could not be dispersed or damaged.l He was also a generous donor of silver, responsible for much of the fine Tudor plate for which Corpus Christi is celebrated.2 While the creation of Parker's Library has been fully studied,3 the circumstances surrounding his gifts of plate are not so well known. The rediscovery of a group of indentures and associated drawings recording gifts of elaborately wrought table and chapel silver sheds new light not only on surviving plate, but also on lost pieces and on the ways in which a patron regarded his gifts and through them attempted to preserve his memory.

     

  • Pierre Fourfault and the Lennoxlove Toilet Service

    By Michèle Bimbenet-Privat

    Nothing now survives of the sumptuous silver furnishings made by the silversmiths of the Louvre and Gobelins manufactories during the reign of Louis XIV: the tables, gueridons, orange-tubs, torcheres, display stands and balustrades, as well as the mirrors of Venetian glass framed in gold or silver- gilt, all disappeared into the furnaces ofthe royal mint during the first meltings ordered by Louis XIV in 1689 and 1690 to finance the war of the League of Augsburg. Those silver objects of this period that have survived therefore tend to be modest vessels or items isolated from middle-class, bourgeois or noble decorative schemes, and cannot even begin to give an idea of the coherence achieved by a consistent use of the same material and a unified style of decoration in royal silver furnishings. These included not only the meubles meublans-

     

    that is to say beds, tables and chairs, sconces, lamps and can- delabra - but also sets of table-ware including canteens vessels and plates, as well as writing instruments (desks, inkwells, sand-sprinklers) and toilet services.

  • Adam Silver Reassessed

    By Michael Snodin

    The first study to put forward Robert Adam as the dominating influence on the design of British Neo-classical silver was Robert Rowe's Adam Silver, published in 1965. ' Since then the roles of other Neo-classical architects have been more fully investigated, including those of James Stuart, Sir William Chambers and James Wyatt, casting doubt on Adam's contribution as a pioneer. The recent publication of the full extent of the Adams' service for Sir Watkin Williams-Wynn suggests that the time has come to look again at the record of Adam-designed silver, and to attempt a reassessment of its real contribution to the origins and promotion of Neo-classical silver in Britain.

     

  • Samuel Parker and the Vulliamys, Purveyors of Gilt Bronze

    By Geoffrey de Bellaigue

    One of the most striking aspects of the furnishings of Carlton House and Brighton Pavilion in George IV's lifetime must have been the gilt bronzes, in the form of mounts on furniture, wall-lights, candelabra, chandeliers, clock cases and fire-dogs as well as ornaments for chimney-pieces and embellishments to porcelain and lacquer vases. A visitor to Carlton House in 1813 found the 'glitter . . . quite eblouissant'.