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From the earliest times, learning how to construct simple and complex geometric shapes has been part of the training of a silversmith. Moreover, the educated patron of 300 years ago was also likely to be well versed in geometry and able to appreciate the subtleties of design of a seemingly simple cream jug or sugar bowl. Many functional objects in what became known as the 'Queen Anne' style rely for effect on polygons, multifoils, ellipses, and truncated pyramids and cones. Curiously, however, books on the history of European silver have been silent on the subject of geometry and the process by which design is transmitted via the workbench to a finished silver object has scarcely been explored. In his introductory essay, Christopher Hartop suggests that many of the geometric forms that became popular in the early eighteenth century were in fact modelled on imported Asian ceramics and lacquer, some of which in turn were copying much earlier Chinese metal wares. Yet a silversmith still needed a knowledge of geometrical constructions, whether he was copying an imported object, following a design on paper, or utilizing a template.Using the Domcha Collection of predominantly English seventeenth- to nineteenth-century silver as examples, this important new study examines the role of geometry in the design and manufacture of silverware. The coffee pot illustrated on the front cover is a truncated octagonal pyramid and the octofoil salver achieves its pleasing effect through the intersection of four ellipses with common centre. The Domcha Collection, formed during the last 25 years, shows the timeless beauty of plain silver forms, where the emphasis is on line rather than ornament. The collection includes works by such important masters as Paul de Lamerie, Paul Crespin, Frederick Kandler, and the Hennell family. Silver made in Ireland and Scotland is also featured, as is provincial English silver made in York, Sheffield and Newcastle.

The beauty and stunning craftsmanship of silver made in East Anglia have long been celebrated by scholars and collectors. This book describes in depth a wealth of important silver articles made in the region which are now to be found in museums and private collections in Britain, America and Australia, as well as in churches in Norfolk, Suffolk and Essex. Many of the objects featured have never been published before, including a beaker in the Royal Collection by Elizabeth Haslewood, Norwich's only woman silversmith of the Stuart period, and a magnificent Charles II tankard from the Gregory Peck collection. The essays, the results of new research on many aspects of the economic and social history of the region, set the silver in its historical context. They present a fascinating perspective on everyday life for many East Anglians during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Even modest households might have owned a few silver spoons at that time.The consumer demand from yeomen, merchants and others was filled by silversmiths working not only in Norwich, the second largest city in the kingdom, but also in smaller towns such as King's Lynn, Great Yarmouth, Beccles, Ipswich, Colchester and Cambridge. Norwich closely guarded its right to mark silverware made in the city with its civic arms. In the reign of Elizabeth, silversmiths there such as William Cobbold made objects to equal the finest creations of London, Antwerp and Amsterdam. European influences, especially from the Netherlands, were especially important in Norwich, which had a large community of immigrant craftsmen during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Nearly a hundred photographs of marks used by silversmiths throughout East Anglia, many of them newly identified, make this book an essential tool for the collector as well as the local historian. '...a work of art in its own right.' Ian Collins in Eastern Daily Press

Artists such as John Flaxman, Thomas Stothard, Edward Hodges Baily were among the many who designed and modelled silverware for Rundell & Bridge, the Royal Goldsmiths who served two monarchs - George III and his son the Prince Regent (later George IV). It was a period of unparalleled prosperity in Britain during which patrons, led by the colourful Prince Regent, commissioned objects of silver, silver-gilt and even gold in the finest taste. Philip Rundell and John Bridge were well placed to respond to this new fashion for opulence. Directing their workshops from 1802 were the silversmith Benjamin Smith and the designer Digby Scott; and after Paul Storr, the most celebrated English silversmith of the period, took charge in 1807, the workshop grew until it employed the talents of several hundred gifted designers, modellers, chasers and engravers. It was a successful blending of art and industry that remains unsurpassed in the decorative arts. The firm Rundell & Bridge were appointed Royal Goldsmiths, Silversmiths, Jewellers and Medallists in 1797 and held the Royal Warrant until 1830. Yet Rundell & Bridge did more than promote innovative styles; they marketed new types of tableware.Despite the threat of invasion by Napoleon, the British enthusiastically embraced not only new designs from France, such as those inspired by the surge of Egyptomania, but new customs of the tabletop. Tying in with an exhibition at Koopman Rare Art, London, the first ever to be devoted to the firm's achievement, the book shows the importance of the Prince Regent as a patron of goldsmiths and presents a fascinating portrait of London against the backdrop of the Napoleonic Wars. It features a wealth of magnificent silver and gold objects, snuff boxes, jewellery, medals and bejewelled swords from museums and private collections in the United Kingdom, United States, Canada and Australia. With a foreword by His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales, the book will be a valuable addition not only to art historical studies but also to the social and economic history of the period. Net proceeds of the sale of the book will benefit the Prince's Trust.

The French Hospital for poor French Protestants and their descendants residing in Great Britain was incorporated in 1718. Affectionately known as La Providence, it was one of the earliest foundations to cater for London's needy immigrants, and one of the first in Britain to provide sympathetic care for the mentally ill. This book charts the hospital's history from its early days in Finsbury to its present location in the cathedral city of Rochester, Kent, where it provides sheltered housing for elderly people of Huguenot descent. Over the years many distinguished Huguenot settlers or their descendants have been associated with the hospital, among them the soldiers Henri, Earl of Galway, and John, Earl Ligonier, the lawyer Sir Samuel Romilly and the archaeologist Sir Austen Henry Layard. The ivory carver David Le Marchand died there in 1726. The architect Robert Lewis Roumieu designed the spectacular new building in Victoria Park, Hackney, which was the French Hospital's home from the late 1860s to the early 1940s. More than a hundred new photographs of the hospital's collections of paintings, engravings, silver, furniture and memorabilia provide a unique visual record.Portraits featured include the eighteenth-century Huguenot merchants Jean-Henri Guinand and Pierre Ogier. The early hospital records held at the Huguenot Library include tradesmen's bills, portraits of inmates and hospital staff. An eighteenth-century steward's diary records that one inmate hid over half a hundredweight of the hospital's coal supply under her bed. Heraldic shields and book-plates record some of the principal Huguenot families who have served as directors, and a transcription of the 1742 inventory compiled in French lends historical colour. This richly illustrated account will appeal to a wide audience including social and art historians and all who are interested in Huguenot heritage.

Norfolk Summer presents the story about the making of a film starring Julie Christie and Alan Bates Joseph Losey's award-winning movie The Go-Between was filmed entirely on location in Norfolk in 1970. The film charts the tragic story of a young boy's loss of innocence during a hot summer and stars Julie Christie and Alan Bates as a pair of lovers crossing class boundaries in late Victorian England. The production brought together the playwright Harold Pinter, who adapted L.P. Hartley's elegant novel for the screen, the acclaimed director Joseph Losey and a cast of international stars for ten weeks' filming in and around Melton Constable Hall in north Norfolk - a time of happy creativity, some tension and a good deal of comedy. But the idyllic summer only came about after years of bitter battling over the rights of the book, and it was to be followed by yet more intrigue and high drama, which culminated in the film's triumph at the 1971 Cannes Film Festival, where it won the prestigious Palme d'Or.

How has the firm of Swaine Adeney Brigg, one of Britain's oldest and most prestigious manufacturers of leather goods and umbrellas, survived for so long? What are the ingredients of its lasting success? This book charts how the company has kept pace with the shifting needs and demands of the marketplace, seizing trading opportunities, for the most part successfully, along the way. Swaine & Adeney began as makers of driving, riding, and hunting whips, becoming whip-makers to the royal family. With the coming of the railways, horse-drawn transport was greatly reduced and demand for whips shifted away from driving accessories to hunting and fashionable riding accessories. As the twentieth century dawned Swaine & Adeney survived the advent of the motor car by applying their leatherworking skills also to the making of luggage. Other equestrian accessory companies were absorbed: J. Kohler & Son, makers of coaching and hunting horns, and G. & J. Zair Ltd, whip-makers of Birmingham.In the dark days of 1943, Thomas Brigg & Sons, London's leading umbrella and walking-stick manufacturers joined forces with Swaine & Adeney, bringing with them their own long and impressive history of craftsmanship and royal patronage. Together, as Swaine Adeney Brigg, they emerged into the post-war era with renewed vigour. The hatters Herbert Johnson and the luggage-making arm of Papworth Industries were later added to the group. Neville Chamberlain, Margot Fonteyn, Augustus John, and Stirling Moss have been among the proud owners of the group's stylish products, and Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones and Peter Sellers as Inspector Clouseau both wore Herbert Johnson hats.

A magnificent collection of antique silver objects from England and France and Italy is presented in this unusual catalogue. Its tablet format signals the crucial role played today by state-of-the-art electronic media in the service of silver collecting. Among the silversmiths whose work features in the book are: Paul de Lamerie; Jacques-Nicolas Roettiers; Rundell, Bridge & Rundell; Paul Storr; Edward Feline; Lewis Mettayer, and David Willaume II. Each object is given a full technical and historical description. Paul Storr's great dinner service made for Sir John Gladstone, father of the former prime minister, is also given several pages of illustrations, while the Italian Renaissance tazza with central figure of Vespasian made for Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini is discussed at length. A panoramic view of a selection of items from the Gladstone Dinner Service is shown in a colourful fold-out.

A remarkable private collection formed over the last thirty years is the focus of this richly illustrated book that introduces the reader to English silver spanning a century and a half from a little before the Tudor age (1485-1603) to the threshold of the Civil War (1642-51). This was a period when England changed out of all recognition. At the beginning it was still essentially a medieval country dominated by an autocratic king and a rich and powerful Church; by the end of the period the Church had lost virtually all of its power and, with the execution of Charles I in 1649, the monarchy itself was abolished. To a degree, this changing world is mirrored in the styles represented by the silver featuring in the collection. Besides setting the silver against its social and historical background the book examines the wide range of techniques used by silversmiths at the time to shape and adorn silver objects.

Whereas the life of her husband, the dashing Napoleonic general and diplomat Charles de Flahaut, is well known, Margaret has remained in the shadows. Yet this biographical study, based on unpublished and intimate correspondence in the Archives Nationales, Paris, reveals her to have been the more interesting of the two. It shows how much he depended on her brains, political judgment and artistic taste as well as her fortune to guide him in his career. More than that, their letters to each other also confirm that she made a success of her controversial marriage and that the bond between them was strengthened through all the vicissitudes of their life together. A faithful and sincere friend, she could be an implacable enemy: Talleyrand's companion, the duchesse de Dino, whom she dubbed `that horrid little serpent', and the Duke of Wellington, `that bully', were favourite targets.Her lively, observant but wicked pen takes us with her on visits to Talleyrand at Valencay, to the marquis de Lafayette, to the duchesse de Praslin at Vaux-le-Vicomte, to house parties in stately homes of England and Scotland - Arundel, Woburn, Bowood, Chatsworth, Grimsthorpe and Drummond Castle. Acknowledged a superb hostess, her descriptions of the menus, and entertainments organized in her homes in Scotland, London, and Paris and at the Flahaut embassies in Vienna and in London capture the flavour of those cosmopolitan gatherings. Her guests were also drawn to the display of her fine French furniture and collection of works of art, acquired during her years in Paris which set a new fashion in decoration. Interesting, too, are her accounts of sightseeing in Rome before the city of the Grand Tour changed into the capital of united Italy. The enjoyable social life in the continental watering places is also described, for Margaret believed in the curative effects of spas.A lifelong liberal in politics and an upholder of Whig principles, her politicomanie inspires sharp comments on the opponents of Reform in England and on the self-seeking ministers of Louis-Philippe in France. Unusually, for a British woman, the daughter of Admiral Keith, an inveterate enemy of the French, she shared her husband's admiration for Napoleon and joined with him in supporting Napoleon III.Born before her time she could have made a name for herself in today's world as a professional artist or politician in her own right. As it was, she used her talents to become an expert in the art of living the life so amusingly and vividly evoked in letters to her husband, her children and her close friends. These relationships, which are the heart of the book, are presented to the reader by an English woman historian, herself a Francophile.

The value of inventories in charting how houses were arranged, furnished and used is now widely appreciated. Typically, the listings and valuations were occasioned by the death of an owner and the consequent need to deal with testamentary dispositions. That was not always so. The inventory for Castlecomer House, Co. Kilkenny, for example, was drawn up to make a claim following the house's devastation in the 1798 uprising. Mostly hitherto unpublished, the inventories chosen give new-found insights into the lifestyle and taste of some of the foremost families of the day. Above stairs, the inventories show the evolving collecting habits and tastes of eighteenth-century patrons across Ireland and how the interiors of great town and country houses were arranged or responded to new materials and new ideas. The meticulous recording of the contents of the kitchen and scullery likewise sheds light on life below stairs. Itemized equipment required for the brewhouse, dairy, stables, garden and farmyard reflects the at times significant scale of the communities the houses supported and the remarkable degree of self-sufficiency at some of the demesnes. A comprehensive index facilitates access to the myriad items forming the inventories, while the books listed at three of the houses are tentatively identified in separate appendices. A foreword together with short preambles to the inventories set the households in their historical context. Illustrated with contemporary engravings of the houses and with portraits of the owners of the time, the inventories will appeal to country-house visitors, historians of interiors, patronage, collecting and material culture as well as to scholars, curators, collectors, creative designers, film directors, bibliographers, lexicographers and novelists. The eighteenth century is the period onto which the Knight of Glin directed his penetrating gaze as art historian. The book is dedicated to his memory.

The book begins by the North Sea. It is a late summer's afternoon, and a bright sun has dispersed the greyness of the day. Two Englishmen are enjoying a swim off the Essex coast when all at once both have the feeling that they are back at the French seaside. They find themselves starting to tell each other of their youthful experiences of living in France. The adventures they narrate follow one after another like waves rolling onto the shore.Clive, coming from London, had found himself spending a year deep in the French countryside within sight of the western Pyrenees; John, hailing from Devon, had ended up living for a while in the City of Light within sight of the Folies Bergere. Outsiders though they were, they momentarily became part of French society, their adventures fuelled by the culinary delights of their adopted land.They tell their tales with humour and relish as they recall their initiation into the French way of life of decades ago - and how it shaped their own.