Jewellery and men in Tudor and Jacobean England
Project team
- Natasha Awais-Dean
- Dora Thornton, curator, Renaissance collections and the Waddesdon Bequest
Department of Prehistory and Europe
Partners
- Professor Evelyn Welch, Queen Mary,
University of London
Supported by
An Arts and Humanities Research Council
Collaborative Doctoral Award
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Inspired: contemporary views of Renaissance jewellery
In late 2011-early 2012 a display of contemporary jewellery considering the attributes and preoccupations of a 21st-century man by six early-career silversmiths, and inspired by the British Museum's Renaissance jewels, was displayed in Room 46.
The craftsmen and women have all completed postgraduate training at Bishopsland in Oxfordshire. This year-long workshop aims to support young graduates, so they can then establish their own workshop and pursue a career as an independent designer-maker. Since 1993, about 150 silversmiths have taken part in the programme.
Rather than create pastiche copies of Museum objects, the group were required to remain faithful to the sentiments embodied within male Renaissance jewellery. Displayed alongside objects from this period, their work offers a contemporary perspective of personal adornment.
