A Well Staged Exhibit.
It is scarcely necessary to remind readers that there is a peculiar attraction in a well staged exhibit—public or private. A case of Roman and still earlier bronzes may be made attractive by an arrangement giving a gradation of subject and inclusive of the plainer types with the more delicately formed ornamental trinkets. A very fine example of how to arrange such a collection is seen in one of the rooms in Stafford House, the new home of the London Museum. The entire collection, representative of various periods of the Roman occupation of Britain, so carefully mounted, is worthy of close inspection. It includes many rare pieces, one being an early Roman lamp, which was found in Greenwich and is said to be unique among London curios. Indeed, it is probable that none so fine, nor of exactly the same design, has been found in England. This we are able to reproduce (see [Fig. 50]). The newly arranged London Museum is likely to be a rendezvous of Londoners and their friends from the country, for not only are there early antiquities in copper and brass, but many fascinating curios arranged in historical sequence, showing the development in metal-work as it was fashioned by London smiths and founders, and the progress made by other craftsmen as kings and queens came and went and the London as we know it to-day was being evolved.
V
MEDIÆVAL
ANTIQUITIES
CHAPTER V
MEDIÆVAL ANTIQUITIES
Domestic brasswork—Metal signs and badges—Ornamental trinkets—Arms and armour.
As the collector of copper and brass assembles his treasures and arranges them according to the different periods in which they were made, it is always the household utensils which predominate. As time goes on their number increases and the ornamental blends with the useful; but the increase in the variety is only in proportion to the gradual extension of the number of other household curios of contemporary dates.
The period under review, for convenience termed mediæval, extends in actual fact from the rougher days of the Norman sovereigns to those when bluff King Hal held court and Elizabeth made so many "grand tours" among the country seats of her people. At the beginning of this period the furniture of even the nobility and wealthy ecclesiastics was very scanty, and when the proud barons moved from one castle to another they carried with them all their household furnishings, even their more treasured culinary utensils of copper and brass. They stowed them away along with their jewels and their other belongings in oak coffers, which in the earliest days were made so that they could be carried on poles by retainers.
"In oaken coffers I have stuffed my crowns,
In cypress chests my arras counterpoints,
Pewter and brass, and all things that belong
To house or housekeeping."
The Taming of the Shrew.