Philippa Glanville welcomes the Goldsmiths’ Company’s ambitious, vibrant survey of the plate used by British churches.
Philippa Glanville,
Sunday, 22nd June 2008
The very use of the word ‘Treasures’ in the exhibition’s title sets up a discomfiting resonance. However, scholars emphasise that beautifying worship has always been seen as a way of glorifying God, as well as uplifting the thoughts of worshippers. Also, of course, it is not the Church that has bought or commissioned these gilded objects, but individual donors, and their histories reflect the power of material memory, the pull of communal values and the sociology of giving, something that a secular and individualistic society has largely forgotten. For a widow to give an inherited Jacobean steeple cup, for example (Fig. 1), to the oldest building in the community, for use in perpetuity, was to ensure that the family name would be literally ‘on the lips of men’ when communion was celebrated. Philippa Glanville is a social historian and writer on silver. ‘Treasures of the English Church: Sacred Gold and Silver 800-2000’, Goldsmiths’ Hall, London, May 30-July 12 (+44 [0] 20 7606 7010). Book by Timothy Schroder (ed.), ISBN 9781903470749 (paper), £20 (Paul Holberton). 1 St Michael staffhead, by Leslie Durbin (1913-2005), 1960. Silver-gilt, Gloucester Cathedral 2 Steeple cup, c. 1619. Silver gilt, Northleach, Gloucestershire 3 Thurible for Lincoln Cathedral by Anthony Elson (b. 1935), 2008. Silver
The National Galleries in Edinburgh and London and the National Trust have formidable fund-raising tasks in hand, but the targets would be even higher were it not for Britain's tax laws – which could be about to get better.
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