Fine Craftsmanship

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THREADS OF FEELING: The London Foundling Hospital's Textile Tokens 1740–1770

NOW ONLY AVAILABLE TO BUY FROM THE FOUNDLING MUSEUM. When mothers left babies at London’s Foundling Hospital in the mid-eighteenth century, the Hospital often retained a small token as a means of identification, usually a piece of fabric. These swatches of fabric now form Britain’s largest collection of everyday textiles from the eighteenth century. They include the whole range of fabrics worn by ordinary women, along with ribbons, embroidery and even some baby clothes. Beautiful and poignant, each scrap of material reflects the life of an infant child and that of its absent parent. The enthralling stories the fabrics tell about textiles, fashion, women’s skills, infant clothing and maternal emotion are the material of Threads of Feeling. More

Spanish Fashion in Early Modern Europe: The Prevalence and Prestige of Spanish Attire in the Courts of the 16th and 17th Centuries

The modes of dress adopted at the Spanish court were highly influential elsewhere in Europe from about the mid sixteenth to the mid seventeenth century – the period corresponding to Spanish political hegemony. The nature and prevalence of the diffusion of Spanish fashion is, however, a phenomenon that has never been systematically studied, partly because it is no easy task to pool the numerous sources of information, both archival (in many languages) and visual. More

Picturing Piety: The Book of Hours

This catalogue of Books of Hours, the 'best seller' of the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, presents two dozen Books of Hours mostly dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Examples from France, the Netherlands, and Belgium are presented chronologically with illustrations in colour for each entry. More

Treasures to Hold: Irish and English Miniatures 1650–1850 from the National Gallery of Ireland Collection

The exceptional collection of miniatures held by the National Gallery of Ireland is for the first time made widely known with this publication. With an essay on the history and technique of miniature painting in Ireland, where it flourished particularly well, the book contains an astonishing variety of miniatures in watercolour as well as enamel, made for all sorts of purposes – lovers’ keepsakes, memorials of great men, portraits of great actresses (like Hone’s fine miniature of Sarah Siddons). Paul Caffrey is a lecturer at the National College of Art and Design, Dublin. More

Miniatures in the Wallace Collection

The publication celebrates the recent opening of a new gallery at Hertford House devoted to miniatures and gold boxes, the Boudoir Cabinet. It features over seventy of the finest miniatures in the Wallace Collection, all of them reproduced in colour, most for the first time. More

MUGHAL AND DECCANI PAINTINGS: The Eva and Konrad Seitz Collection of Indian Miniatures

The collection of Eva and Konrad Seitz is one of the most important private collections of Indian paintings in Europe. The 60 works presented here provides an excellent survey of Indian miniature painting from 1575 to 1850 at the court of the north Indian Mughal rulers and at the ateliers in the Deccan further south, which has hitherto received far less attention. More

A Century of Silver: The Courtauld Family of Silversmiths

This book accompanies the new display of the Courtauld family silver collection in the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, which opened in June 2003. All the silver presented in the book was produced or hallmarked by three generations of the Courtauld family of goldsmiths. More

Treasures of the English Church: A Thousand Years of Sacred Gold and Silver

There has never been a display like it. This is the catalogue to an ambitious exhibition at the Goldsmiths’ Hall, London, which will comprise 250 gold and silver objects and sets of objects spanning the history of the Church from the earliest possible times to the present day. More

French Bronzes in the Wallace Collection

The group of about one hundred French bronzes in the Wallace Collection is justly considered one of the finest such collections in the world. Fifty-one of the best are featured in this book, the first in-depth study of the subject in English. More

Hungary’s Heritage: Princely Treasures from the Esterházy Collection

This book presents magnificent artefacts collected by an aristocratic family of fabulous wealth. It shows goldsmith’s work and jewellery of extraordinary quality, and a number of decorations and commemorative medals, dating mostly from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. These include some of the finest creations of their time, by artists such as Hans Petzolt of Nuremberg and Augsburg’s Drentwett family, as well as renowned Hungarian goldsmiths of the Mannerist and Baroque era. More