Wednesday 22nd March, 2017

5:15pm–6:30pm

public

free

not required

The Lecture Hall, Dr Williams's Library, 14 Gordon Square, London, WC1H 0AR

‘Behold, how great a fire a little matter kindleth!’: Dissenting Silver in the Collection of Dr Williams's Library

One of the little known treasures of Dr Williams Library is its collection of silver. While embracing a characteristic simplicity of design, whether as mug, candlestick or jug, it is of the highest quality and represents the work of some of the most celebrated and fashionable silversmiths of their day. This lecture will focus on the objects themselves, and the contexts of their manufacture and consumption, addressing the position of this precious material within a non-conformist context.

Dr Helen Clifford, Curator of Swaledale Museum North Yorkshire

 www.swaledalemuseum.org

Helen Clifford read History at Cambridge and studied the workings of the eighteenth century London silver trade for her PhD, published in 2004. She has worked at the Victoria and Albert Museum and the Ashmolean where she was Oxford College Silver Leverhulme Research Fellow. She is currently Honorary Fellow and Museum Consultant in the History Department at the Univeristy of Warwick and runs the Swaledale Museum in Reeth.

Exhibitions:

Curator, GOLDWORK: The Story of Britain and Gold, Goldsmiths' Company, London 2012

Curator, A Treasured Inheritence: Six Hundred Years of Oxford College Silver, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford 2004

Curatorial Advisor, Metalmorphosis, Tradition and Innovation in British Silver and Metalwork 1880-1998, Museum of Decorative Arts, Prague 1998

Curator, Twentieth Century Silver, Crafts Council, London 1993

Curator, Sporting Glory 400 Years of Sporting Trophies, Victoria and Albert Museum, London 1992