In the late 1970s, the decision was made to extend the European applied arts collections into the 20th century. This was in part to bring the European collections in line with other departments of the Museum where the collections went up to the present day. Contemporary manufactures had in fact been acquired from the Museum’s earliest years in the mid-18thcentury. This lecture looks at how the collection was developed, at some of the key figures who shaped it before the 1970s and at the expansion into new fields in more recent decades.
Curator at the British Museum for almost 50 years (1974-2023), responsible for the post 1800 collections in what is now the Department of Britain, Europe and Prehistory – collections which include metalwork, silver, jewellery, ceramics and glass, alongside traditional and regional European costume and textiles, woodwork, basketry. She has written widely on many aspects of these collections, is co-author of the two-volume Catalogue of the Hull Grundy Gift of Jewellery to the British Museum (1984), author of Decorative 1850-1950. A catalogue of the British Museum Collection (1991, revised 1994), and Cartier 1900-1939, exhibition catalogue, British Museum (1997). Written with her longtime collaborator Charlotte Gere, Jewellery in the Age of Queen Victoria: a mirror to the world (2010) won the 2011 William Berger Prize for British Art History. She is currently President of the Society of Jewellery Historians and Trustee of the Albert Dawson Educational Trust.
Source: thesocietyforthehistoryofcollecting.wildapricot.org/event-6300917
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