For the first time, National Museums Scotland’s important collection of Renaissance jewellery from Scotland is considered together in this fully illustrated volume alongside significant items from the Royal Collection. The book was inspired by the acquisition by NMS of the extraordinary Fettercairn Jewel: the fine iconography of this exquisitely enamelled locket held coded messages for its sixteenth century owners, and continues to intrigue its viewers today. Renaissance jewellery like this in Scotland is particularly notable given the rare survival of such jewels from the sixteenth century. Some of these owe their survival thanks to their association with Mary, Queen of Scots.Elite Renaissance men and women commissioned, wore and gifted intricate and valuable pieces of jewellery. For most, this was not simply adornment, but used to communicate messages and display status. These were intimate personal possessions and suggest the meanings invested in them by their owners, that resonate with audiences today. Such jewels are evocative objects.This lavishly illustrated book brings together expert voices from the key Scottish collections (National Museums Scotland, National Galleries of Scotland, Royal Collection Trust) to explore the making, meaning and function of such jewellery in sixteenth century Scotland, and features an interpretation of the Fettercairn Jewel by the jewellery expert Geoffrey Munn. It reveals hitherto underappreciated evidence of goldsmithing in Scotland while considering significant continental influences in the design and production of jewellery. Given the ephemeral nature, and rare survival of Renaissance jewellery, its authors also suggest alternative ways of tracing the gems that have gone, in the portraits and inventories of Scottish men and women.

The Wider Goldsmiths’ Trade in Elizabethan and Stuart London is the first book to study all aspects of the Goldsmiths’ trade. It challenges the assumption that the manufacture of silver plate and gold jewellery was the trade's only activity during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It considers associated activities such as refining, wiredrawing, and the making of small-swords and watches, as well as the development of the modern banking system. On Elizabeth I’s accession, England was essentially a ‘third world economy’, with exports mainly of wool, unfinished woolen cloth and some minerals, whilst imports consisted of a great range of goods including luxuries such as silks, fine linens, and even scissors. By the end of the seventeenth century, the situation was transformed: a burgeoning maritime trade with many parts of the world enabled the import of raw materials as well as some luxury goods and a wide range of exports which included certain goods produced in London with an international reputation for quality, such as beaver hats and mathematical instruments. Throughout the period, religious refugees and economic migrants brought their skills and knowledge to England. At the Restoration, Royalists returning to London from the Continent introduced French and Low Country fashions in dress, manners, cuisine and dining practice.Refining, wiredrawing, and the making of plate, smallwares and jewellery were at the heart of the trade and of concern to the Goldsmiths’ Company that had responsibility for ensuring that the correct alloys were used for silver and gold wares. This was not always the case for clocks, watches and swords. Nevertheless, they are included in this study as several members of the Company were instrumental in the development of clock and watch making in the city. Towards the end of the seventeenth century, the great increase in the sale of watches with gold and silver cases forced the Company to become involved in the control of this trade. Similarly, after the Civil Wars, the wearing of the small-sword by all those with aspirations to gentility gave rise to a demarcation dispute between the Goldsmiths’ and Cutlers’ Companies. Further, during the Commonwealth, goldsmith-bankers developed the clearing system which led to modern retail banking.This book considers the wider Goldsmiths’ trade against dynamic changes: the organization and control of its branches and the design, manufacture and sale of its wares. The twelve chapters cover a range of topics – from history and context, to the various branches of the trade.

The distinguished private collection, known as the Griffin Collection, comprises in its entirety examples of every category of ring – signet, devotional, memorial, decorative – dating from antiquity to modern times. This catalogue focuses on about one hundred special rings, chosen as highlights of this extensive collection with the aim to offer the reader a real history of the art of the ring across the ages.Covering as they do so many facets of civilization, rings tell us more about the hopes, aspirations, taste and sentiments of our ancestors than any other jewels surviving from the past. Moreover, the examples from the Griffin Collection, which have been assembled with taste and discernment over several decades, are not only rare but also of unusually high quality and intrinsic value. As well as being aesthetically attractive, these rings offer us a glimpse into the lives of their owners, as becomes evident in the vivid account offered by Diana Scarisbrick, one of the world’s leading jewellery historians.The collection illustrates the many uses of rings—as seals needed for business, in expressing religious belief, political loyalties and personal interests such as theatre going, hunting, classical art and astrology. Some demonstrate high rank and commemorate great historical occasions; others dating from the Middle Ages to Victorian England mark the major events of human existence – love, marriage and death – with rings bearing symbols and inscriptions. Often connected with historical figures, monarchs, notably Charles II and William IV or Isabella Zápolya, Queen of Hungary, but also with popes or artists, such as the Romantic poet Lord Byron. Each ring reveals personal information about the people who wore them and the societies in which they lived. An unusually high proportion of the rings have distinguished later provenance, coming from celebrated collectors: George Spencer 4th Duke of Marlborough, Constantine Ionides, Ernest Guilhou, Ralph Harari and Maurice de Rothschild.

This is a revised second edition of the best-selling book which incorporates new and additional material on the majority of the objects as well as an expanded glossary which will be of interest to both collector and scholar. The first edition was long-listed for the R.L. Shep Award by the Textile Society of America and chosen as one of the twelve best books of the year by the Crafts Council of the UK, both in 2020.

This beautifully illustrated and scholarly book presents the Frelinghuysen collection of Chinese and Japanese export porcelain. It is the first major publication to consider Chinese and Japanese blue and white together.This extraordinary collection, assembled carefully over fifty years, features an exceptionally wide array of Asian blue and white porcelain – that most ubiquitous and influential of all ceramics. Ranging from Chinese pieces specially made for Portuguese traders in the 16th century to late 19th century commissions for the Thai royal court, the collection also includes numerous Chinese classics from theera of the European trading companies and a notable selection of Japanese export porcelain. In its vast scope it speaks of the diverse impulses and historical forces that propelled the trade in Asian porcelain and provides a lens through which to view the interaction of East and West from the early modern age to the dawn of the 20th century.More than 300 pieces from the collection are illustrated and discussed in full and another 250 are illustrated in a compendium, all divided into thematic chapters that reflect the many ways Chinese and Japanese porcelain has been traded, collected and lived with around the world. Essays by William R. Sargent, former Curator of Asian Export Art at the Peabody Essex Museum, and noted armorial porcelain authorityAngela Howard, precede the thirteen chapters, which include Faith, Identity, For the Table, To European Design and Made in Japan. Great rarities are featured alongside small, amusing pieces and the many export porcelains made to elevate the practices of daily life.With its strict adherence to blue and white porcelain, the collection intensifies our focus on forms, patterns and designs, gathering together wares that are often considered only separately for study while also covering areas of little recent scholarship, such as the Thai market material. The specialized reader will find references to the latest research while the more general reader will appreciate a comprehensive overview of Asian export porcelain. There has not been a significant survey of either Chinese or Japanese blue and white since the 1990s, and they have never been considered together in a major publication.

Brittle Beauty presents a superlative private collection of European porcelain – radical, rare and in many cases unique pieces assembled over thirty years. Lavishly illustrated and insightfully researched, the book showcases eighty vessels and sculptures, and includes accounts of their patrons and former owners, many as eccentric as the works themselves. One striking attribute of porcelain is its reflective glaze. Mirror-like in a wider sense, Brittle Beauty: Reflections on 18th Century European Porcelain examines the context in which this porcelain was created – including cultural, political, topographical and ceremonial aspects. It also looks at related materials such as silver, textiles and glass. The 18th century was the golden age of porcelain in Europe, which had previously been dependent on precious imports from the Far East. The discovery of the formula for hard-paste porcelain in Dresden in 1709 inspired the establishment of manufactories throughout the Continent. However, its popularity was not purely commercial: porcelain – with its meld of art and science, beauty and intellect, East and West – became a symbol of Enlightenment culture for every princely court. Oriental motifs and European forms were synthesised with deceptive subtlety; later, creations of pure fantasy emerged, often based on travellers’ accounts of exotic lands. Familiar Occidental themes such as nature, hunting or archaeology were paralleled by ironic narratives of love and vanity. Porcelain, with its fragile allure, is uniquely expressive of the human comedy, yet its destiny has often been brutal and tragic. This book features essays from several eminent scholars. It also showcases a wealth of stunning imagery from Sylvain Deleu, who expertly photographed the pieces, many for the first time.

The 2021 volume of Ceramics in America features wide ranging essays and new discoveries on ceramics used and collected in the American context. Of special note is the reporting of seventeenth-century Chinese porcelain discovered in the ca. 1607 contest of Jamestown, Virginia. Another essay documents the archaeologically-recovered Chinese export porcelain of James and Dolley Madison from their home Montpelier in Virginia. Other articles explore ceramics made to commemorate historical and political events both in America and Great Britain. The subject of nineteenth-century American stonewares made in Massachusetts, New York, Connecticut, and Virginia is covered in four important articles. A special collector’s biopic surveys a highly important American collection of eighteenth-century armorial Chinese porcelain. Other articles will include a profile of North Carolina potter David Stuempfle who continues the old-age tradition of producing wood fired stoneware and a summary of an archaeologically recovered assemblage of early nineteenth-century slip decorated earthenwares attributed to Enoch Wood and James Caldwell of Burslem, Staffordshire.

Gudme: The Iron Age Settlement and Central Halls presents, describes and interprets the many finds and structures that have been comprised during the extended excavations at the central parts of the Gudme locality on southeast Funen, Denmark. Head of excavation Palle Østergaard Sørensen extracts, combines, classifies, dates and temporalizes the many finds and houses from the excavations Gudmehallerne, Gudme III, Gudme IV. Since the 19th century the Gudme area has been known as one of the richest prehistoric localities in Scandinavia, and more than 1,000 roman coins, close to 600 fibulas as well as several small mask and animal figurines form part of the Gudme find assemblage. From AD 200 to AD 600 the site expanded rapidly and covered as much as one square kilometre comprising up to 50 farmsteads. At the individual farms, specialized craftsmanship can be found and the debris and tools of gold- and silversmiths as well as bronze casting is abundant – here, bronze fragments, often from statues, imported from the Roman Empire form a distinct category of finds – bearing witness to a flourishing and innovative world of craftsmanship, as well as an extensive trade network. During this period the unique and monumental halls, with the largest being 47 m long and 10 m wide, dominated the hilltops east of Gudme lake. Just to the south a smaller building accompanied the large hall, and had been purposely demolished and rebuilt several times at the exact same spot. The unusually large entrances to the two adjoined buildings lead straight from one to the other, thus witnessing a duality of buildings that came to define the aristocratic localities throughout Scandinavia in the following 800 years. Hence, Gudme represents a starting point for a significant type of architectural ideal as well as a first generation of central places.

At centre stage in this volume is the Royal Clock Salt, an exceptional national treasure from the courtly culture of the Renaissance. Most probably made in Paris around 1530 by Pierre Mangot, the royal goldsmith to Francis I, the Clock Salt is somewhere between a jewel and a table ornament. Now part of the collection of the Goldsmiths’ Company in London, it is one of only a handful of treasures surviving from the renowned Jewel House of Henry VIII. It is unknown whether it was a diplomatic gift from Francis I or whether Henry VIII bought the Clock Salt himself; regardless, the object raises interesting questions about the role of diplomatic gifts at the Tudor court which is a subject addressed by a number of the authors. Many questions still remain about the Clock Salt’s history following its sale in the aftermath of the English Civil War, but this publication presents the fullest account to date of what is known about the object. Importantly, the authors also place it within a wider European Renaissance context by comparing it with other similar objects known to have been made or designed by Mangot and his contemporaries such as Hans Holbein. A secondary strand in the volume places the Clock Salt in the context of nineteenth- and twentieth-century taste in England and, in particular, reflects recent trends in scholarship by considering the influence of European collectors such as the Rothschilds on the British taste for historic silver. The volume therefore sheds new light on an exquisite object that has beguiled and fascinated owners and viewers for centuries. It also marks the completion of a collaborative research project between the British Museum, the Goldsmiths’ Company and The Rothschild Foundation.

The 2020 volume of Ceramics in America is a celebration of the depth and diversity of ceramics in the American context. Beautifully illustrated articles explore the use of clay from the most basic building bricks to refined earthenwares promoting the political and economic issues of the American Revolution. Of special interest is the origin of the ceramic manufacturing spark in America, looking at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia cited by historians and connoisseurs as the height of recognition of achievement for ceramic production in the United States. The archaeological discovery of rare “black delft” teapot fragments from Charleston’s Drayton Hall is recounted in an exciting collector’s narrative. Other articles will include a profile of North Carolina potter David Stuempfle who continues the old-age tradition of producing wood fired stoneware, a study of Thomas Jefferson’s Chinese porcelain, and Pueblo pottery collected by a German Museum in the early twentieth century.

From the introduction of woodblock printing in China to the development of copper-plate engraving in Europe, the print medium has been used around the world to circulate knowledge. Ceramic artists across time and cultures have adapted these graphic sources as painted or transfer-printed images applied onto glazed or unglazed surfaces to express political and social issues including propaganda, self-promotion, piety, gender, national and regional identities. Long before photography, printers also included pots in engravings or other two-dimensional techniques which have broadened scholarship and encouraged debate. Pots, Prints and Politics examines how European and Asian ceramics traditionally associated with the domestic sphere have been used by potters to challenge convention and tackle serious issues from the 14th to the 20th century. Using the British Museum’s world-renowned ceramics and prints collections as a base, the authors have challenged and interrogated a variety of ceramic objects – from teapots to chamber pots – to discover new meanings that are as relevant today as they were when they were first conceived.

Métier Magazine is devoted to engaging its readers in art, craft, material and techniques. This annual English edition combines a series of articles and amazing stories of crafts, objects and artisans from around the world and from different time periods. The magazine will for instance show amazing textiles (silk and velvet) from the Ottoman Empire (17th century) that have fairly recently been found on an ancient Dutch Shipwreck, but will also show newly designed fabrics, nomadic rugs from Central Asia, reconstructed prehistoric clothing and archaeological conservation of heritage in the Antarctic region.

The 2019 volume of Ceramics in America features exciting new discoveries in the field of American ceramics studies, from an early example of Chinese porcelain found in the New World to previously undocumented green-glazed earthenware made in early-nineteenth-century Philadelphia. New analytic information about the manufacture of hard-paste porcelain, also in the Philadelphia context, will be of special interest to students of American porcelain production. Of special note, reconstructive drawings of two of America’s most important potteries and their kilns are illustrated and discussed: the William Rogers Pottery of Yorktown, Virginia (ca. 1720-1745), and the massive stoneware kilns of Abner Landrum’s Pottersville factory in Edgefield, South Carolina (ca. 1818-1840). Other articles examine topics of American stoneware, including the distinctive eighteenth-century stoneware of Boston and Charlestown, Massachusetts. The journal concludes with a beautifully illustrated two-part presentation on clay tobacco pipes made in the Chesapeake region of America between 1640 and 1660, highlighting the pipe maker’s art and the multicultural circumstance of their manufacture and use.

In Western Europe the Golden Age of Islamic metalwork in Iran was (and is) generally considered to be the earlier period, and later metalwork was collected almost by accident and has been correspondingly little studied and poorly published, though in recent decades the imbalance has been somewhat modified. The Hermitage Collection, which numbers 162 pieces is the largest collection in the world of later Iranian Islamic metalwork, from the West of Iran as far as the Punjab. The great majority of these are household utensils, and their manufacture is characteristic of the middling levels of urban societies, though in Khurasan in the late-15th and early 16th centuries brasses or bronzes inlaid with gold and silver were made for its Timurid rulers. The substantial numbers of Iranian copper-alloy astronomical instruments of this period were made by different craftsmen, for a different public, and deserve separate treatment, though not magic bowls, used in folk-medicine and divination, which are noticed in this volume. In his Introduction, Anatolii Ivanov gives a valuable directoryof museums and other institutions of the former Soviet Union with significant collections, which complement the holdings of the Hermitage and together amount to a truly substantial corpus. The latter were acquired from private collections, but the core of the collection, from the museum attached to the school of industrial drawing founded by Baron Stieglitz, came to the Hermitage in the 1920s, when this was broken up. As well as minutely detailed descriptions of each piece and analyses of their decoration, Ivanov presents a detailed critical survey of the limited documentary evidence afforded by the inscriptions many pieces bear, which is of permanent value as a basis for further scholars working on later Islamic metalwork in general.

Beads, bracelets, necklaces, pendants and many other ornaments are familiar objects that play a fundamental role in personal expression and communication. This book considers how and why the human relationship with ornaments developed and continued over tens of thousands of years, from hunter-gatherer life in the cave to urban elites, from expedient use of natural resources to complex technologies. Using evidence from archaeological sites across Turkey, the Near East and the Balkans, it explores the history of personal ornaments from their appearance in the Palaeolithic until the rise of urban centres in the Early Bronze Age and encompassing technologies ranging from stone cutting to early glazing, metallurgy and the roots of glass manufacture. The development of theoretical and practical approaches to ornaments and the current state of research are illustrated with a wide variety of examples. This book shows that far from being objects of display, of little value in archaeological interpretation and often overlooked, these artefacts are key to understanding trade, relationships, values, beliefs and the construction of personal identity in the past. Indeed, more than any other group of artefacts, their variety in material, form, use and distribution opens doors to both wide ranging scientific exploration and consideration of what it is to be human.

Now in its nineteenth year of publication, Ceramics in America is considered the journal of record for historical ceramics scholarship in the American context and is intended for collectors, historical archaeologists, curators, decorative arts students, social historians, and contemporary potters. The special focus of the 2018 volume of Ceramics in America is The Last Drop Project, held in conjunction with the North Car-olina Pottery Center, where seventeen American potters were invited to create new ceramic works inspired by seventeenth- and eighteenth-century drinking vessels. Included are two wonderfully illustrated articles on con-current installations at the Pottery Center: Michelle Erickson: DISTILLED and In the Pale Moonlight: Pottery & Alcohol in North Carolina. Other articles examine contemporary potters working in the field of historical ceramics reproductions. The journal concludes with an important interdisciplinary study of a late-nineteenth-century industrial pottery of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia.