New Book | Silver for Entertaining: The Ickworth Collection
From Philip Wilson:
James Rothwell, Silver for Entertaining: The Ickworth Collection (London: Philip Wilson Publishers, 2016), 304 pages, ISBN: 978 1781 300428, £50 / $90.
This book is a comprehensive, well illustrated guide to one of the most important collections of 18th-century silver in Europe, extending to nearly a thousand individual pieces, being of the highest quality, style, and exuberance of form and surviving virtually intact along with extensive and previously untapped archival evidence of its commissioning and use. The book analyses the silver from stylistic and technical perspectives and uses it to shed light on the patronage, fashion, and diplomatic, political and social history of the period. It also casts new light on the Herveys, one of England’s most famous and eccentric aristocratic families.
James Rothwell studied art history at Warwick University and gained a master’s degree at the Courtauld Institute of Art. He has worked for the National Trust since 1995 and is the organisation’s adviser on silver, carrying out extensive research on the collections and guiding displays, interpretation, and acquisitions. He has published numerous articles on the subject and is the co-author of Country House Silver from Dunham Massey (2006). In collaboration with the Goldsmiths’ Company, he has overseen a ground-breaking series of exhibitions of works by contemporary silversmiths in National Trust houses.
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