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The History of British Design at the Victoria and Albert Museum
From: The Victoria and Albert Museum
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Philippa GlanvilleElizabeth MillerTessa Murdoch |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
The Victoria and Albert Museum is nearing the completion of its largest project for over half a century: the transformation of the new British Galleries 1500-1900. Located on two floors of the V&A, the new galleries tell the story of British design and offer displays of the very best of historic British furniture, textiles, dress, ceramics, glass, jewellery, silver, prints, paintings and sculpture. Below, V&A curators Dr. Tessa Murdoch, Elizabeth Miller, and Philippa Glanville describe three highlights from the history of British design: Charles I's silver, prints at the time of the Civil War, and the Earl of Melville's magnificent state bed from 1700. |
 he British Galleries of the Victoria and Albert Museum contain the world's most comprehensive collection of British design from the reign of Henry VIII to that of Queen Victoria. Every major name in the history of British design is represented, including Grinling Gibbons, Robert Adam, William Morris and Charles Rennie Mackintosh as well as workshops and manufacturers such as the Mortlake tapestry works, Spitalfields silks, Wedgwood, Doulton and Liberty's. National treasures such as Henry VIII's writing desk, James II's wedding suit and the famous Great Bed of Ware will also be displayed. The new galleries will offer a chronological survey of the history of British design and will cover themes such as who led taste and the latest innovations of each period. |
Philippa Glanville on the silver of Charles I
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| The van Vianen Dolphin Basin. | |
There are many areas in which Charles I was a great success until the 1640s, and one of the areas of achievement is the arts and court entertainments with their subtle and beautiful messages. He was an extraordinarily cultivated man with very refined aesthetic senses, as he came from a sophisticated, international, European background. The van Vianen Dolphin Basin (see above) provides us with an example of the way in which Charles I wanted to bring a fresh look to the English court, and a fresh look to English court silver. |
One could say that the English were not very good at design. As we had no design academy until the early eighteenth century, our goldsmiths had to learn as they could, usually from foreign goldsmiths who came here to work. Although a lot of silver was made and sold in London, the quality of the workmanship and the quality of the design was not particularly good compared to the silver from Paris or the other European centres. This meant of course that sophisticated English patrons--people at court who had travelled and had higher standards--demanded more interesting, foreign silver. |
In the late 1620s we see a change in the look of European silver. This change was driven by changing taste, but also engineered by new designs, for example objects created out of one piece of silver and manipulated into extraordinary shapes. The artist Christian van Vianen had to first devise the shape and the interplay of the ornament, and then he had to make it. These are two different processes, both equally demanding. |
Christian van Vianen came to London in 1630 and set up a workshop in Westminster, employing nine Dutch workmen. His was the largest alien workshop in London at a time when there were identifiably about 200 foreign goldsmiths, jewellers and engravers working there. Being a foreigner, he strictly was not allowed a hallmark and he therefore signed many of his pieces. The basin was made in London in 1632. It is signed by van Vianen in French on the back. It is made out of one piece of metal, and pictures two dolphins' heads that meet at the top, their tails coming round to the bottom part of a slide. In the middle, another fish, possibly a dolphin, is eating, catching, and biting a third fish that's struggling and creating waves. The water coming into the basin is not coming out of the dolphins' mouths, but from a mask that has been created by the junction of the two heads. Either you perceive a face in the middle or you perceive the two dolphins coming together: this illusionistic, grotesque distortion of the silver is typical of this period of the middle years of the seventeenth century. The capacity of a goldsmith to dissolve and to confuse the eye by manipulating the metal in this very ingenious way was admired right across Europe, from Prague to Whitehall. |
Elizabeth Miller on prints at the time of the Civil War
In the part of the British Galleries devoted to the Civil War years there will be a display case dedicated to prints. This mini exhibition attempts to get across one big idea, which is that prints continued to be made in Britain during the period 1640-1660. |
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| Cromwell with page by Lombart. | |
Prints were first made in Europe around 1400 and in England some decades later. To make prints you need paper, which was introduced into Europe in the medieval period. Before the invention of photographical prints, images were the means by which visual information circulated in society. Along with drawings, paintings and sculpture, prints are the best reports we have of how things looked, but they are not snapshots of the past. Motives such as profit, or political influence, mean that they are not unbiased witnesses.
The anonymous woodcut illustrations to political pamphlets published in the 1640s directly addressed the issues of the day. These woodcuts are the precursors of modern political cartoons and caricatures. Engraving and etching are the pictorial equivalents of broadsheet newspapers; woodcuts are the tabloids. |
Technically speaking, a print is a mass-produced image made by transferring ink from a worked surface into a blank sheet of paper. The process can be repeated as often as desired to produce hundreds of examples of the same print. Like waging war, making prints required supplies, equipment and trained manpower. It typically involved individuals with different roles, such as painter, woodcutter, engraver, publisher and retailer. |
Dr Tessa Murdoch on the State Bed from Melville House, Fife
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| Fit for a king: the State Bed from Melville House, Fife. | |
The State Bed from Melville House, Fife is the most spectacular single exhibit in the new British Galleries 1500-1900, with its original luxury hangings of crimson Genoa velvet, backed by ivory Chinese silk damask linings embroidered with crimson silk trimmings. The bed was an extraordinary commission, made in 1700 for George, 1st Earl of Melville for the Apartment of State at his new Palace. |
George Melville served as William III's Secretary of State for Scotland after the Glorious Revolution from 1689 to 1691. By the late 1690s his most important political days were behind him and he faced the prospect of retirement without an appropriate country seat. With an earldom, newly acquired in 1690, he needed to demonstrate the enhanced status of the Melville family. |
The motivation for the commission for a great house and suitable furnishings was inspired by the recent history of the Melville family. George Melville and his younger son David had spent the period from 1683 to 1689 in exile on the continent. Earl Melville had been involved in the Rye House Plot in 1683 to put James, Duke of Monmouth, King Charles II's illegitimate son, on the throne. Because of Melville's implication in this plot, the Melville estates in Scotland were confiscated, and although they were restored to the family in 1686, on payment of a £3000 fine, Earl Melville remained in exile, only returning to Scotland on the accession of William and Mary in 1689. Melville's appointment as Secretary of State for Scotland was the result of family loyalty to King William nurtured during his exile in Holland, and he was made an Earl in April 1690.
In 1700 there were occasional hints that William III might visit Scotland, but is it possible that this great bed was really commissioned to accommodate the monarch on his projected visit to Scotland? There is no doubt that the Apartment of State was inspired by similar apartments in royal palaces and stately homes, made in readiness for a royal visit.
The quantity of luxurious fabric needed and the skilled workmanship required to achieve the resulting theatrical effect would have cost hundreds of pounds in 1700. The hangings consist of approximately 85 metres of velvet, 114.5 metres of damask and 62 metres of supporting linen and buckram. The design and production of the bed was, judging by contemporary bills, also likely to cost several hundred pounds. The actual construction was surprisingly simple, proving that experienced carpenters employed by the upholsterer were able to work swiftly, not wasting time on finishing the woodwork where it would not be seen. That the state bed is upholstered in crimson fabric is indicative of status; crimson was the most expensive colour and thus the grandest. However, there is no evidence that Melville House was used for official entertainment. On the contrary, the recorded visitors during the first Earl's lifetime were mainly family members, and the Melville bed therefore epitomises the political environment in which the Scottish magnates competed for status. |
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