The whole picture
Don’t look at silver in isolation. It is part of a panoply of three-dimensional objects, ’flat’ art and architecture that form our inheritance. Paintings, tapestries and drawings are crucial to our understanding of silver. They depict objects that have not survived, show us how silver was used (particularly on the dining table), enable us to identify designers, and portray the craftsmen, clients and room settings that bring our subject to life. The painting shown here depicts a collection of treasures assembled by the Paston family of Oxnead Hall, in Norfolk. It gives an insight into a period when collecting and intellectual enquiry embraced all that was offered through voyages to the East – a fascination with the natural world and precious objects that resulted in Schatzkammer in houses throughout Europe. Without the series of paintings and tapestries made in France at the end of the seventeenth century, we would have no idea what Louis XIV’s silver looked like, for it was lost in a [Read More]