Birmingham’s Seventeenth-Century Collections

Rebecca Unsworth

Collection: Birmingham Museums Trust

Key Words: Decorative Art, Seventeenth Century, Material Culture, History, Loyalty

The city of Birmingham has an excellent and extensive collection of decorative art, managed and cared for by Birmingham Museums Trust. The collection numbers over 30,000 objects and includes ceramics, glass, metalwork, jewellery, furniture, woodwork, dress and textiles, and items from Britain, Europe and Asia. This article explores the value and utility of Birmingham’s decorative art collection to the museum and its visitors, how it can be displayed and the stories it can tell. The natural tendency might have been to focus here on objects which were manufactured in Birmingham, given the city’s strong tradition of making, particularly in relation to jewellery and metalwork; as seen in the kinds of objects currently exhibited in the Made in Birmingham and Birmingham History galleries at Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery (BMAG). But instead, this article looks at Birmingham’s collection of decorative art from the seventeenth century; objects which were generally neither made nor used in Birmingham, and hail from a time when Birmingham was not a large city or influential place.

Birmingham’s collection includes a surprisingly large number of objects from seventeenth-century Britain and Europe. As Maialen Maugars explores in this issue, when BMAG was first founded in 1885, there were concerted efforts to acquire examples of decorative art from early modern Italy, and many items of glass, metalwork, furniture, ceramics and textiles were purchased for the collection [1]. Since then, the collection has been augmented by donations from various individuals. In 1940, S. Middleton Taylor bequeathed sixty-five pieces of English delftware to BMAG, and in 1965, Edith and Eva Godman gave the museum the metalwork collection of their father, the natural historian Frederick du Cane Godman, which was mostly European silver from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That same year, BMAG acquired the Pinto collection, over 6,000 wooden objects collected by treen expert Edward Pinto and his wife Eva, including numerous items from the seventeenth century. Other objects came to the museum as part of smaller donations or were actively purchased for the collection, like a bottle vase engraved by the Dutchman Willem van Heemskerk (fig.1), which was bought in 1987 with the assistance of the Friends of Birmingham Museums & Art Gallery, the V&A Purchase Grant Fund, and the Art Fund.

The collection is by no means comprehensive. There is depth in some areas and scarcity in others. Most objects from France, for instance, are examples of woodwork, while some places are only represented by a single object. However, the collection is more geographically expansive than Birmingham’s seventeenth-century fine art collection, which focuses on Britain, France, Italy, Spain, and the Low Countries. As well as these countries, there are also objects from Scandinavia, Portugal, Germany and Eastern Europe in the decorative art collection. How can these objects from a few hundred years ago, with seemingly little to no connection to historic or contemporary Birmingham, be made meaningful to visitors today? This article will examine some of the ways in which Birmingham’s historic decorative art collection has been and can be interpreted. In particular, it will demonstrate how such objects can be used to elucidate historical contexts and narratives, not just art historical ones, providing case studies of some of the themes, stories and questions raised by three different objects in the collection.

Rethinking Birmingham’s decorative art collection

Historically, decorative art has been seen as decidedly lesser than fine art. In the Renaissance, a distinction was made between the supposedly higher arts of painting, sculpture and architecture, and the ‘minor’ arts, which belonged to the realm of the artisan or craftsman as opposed to the artist. Design (disegno) was characterised as an intellectual endeavour separate from and superior to manual labour [2]. An artisan might be very skilful and able to demonstrate true craftsmanship, but they were rarely thought to possess the same kind of artistic genius as a painter or sculptor. In reality, this separation between ideation and production is rather arbitrary: rather than a design being imposed wholesale upon a material, objects emerge through continuous conversations and interactions between maker, materials and the environment [3].

However, the notion of a division and hierarchy between art and craft, fine and decorative art, has remained in place to a certain extent throughout the years. When BMAG acquired a number of pieces of contemporary metalwork by local firms from an exhibition held at Bingley Hall in Birmingham in 1886 – implying a recognition of the value of collecting examples of local manufacture – the museum failed to record who any of these pieces were made by, even those by the well-established and highly regarded firm of John Hardman & Co. Surely the name of a painter would never be left off a museum catalogue in such a way, and if it was unknown attempts would be made at an attribution wherever possible.

Before BMAG closed for electrical works in 2020, the decorative art collection was displayed in a few different ways. In the Industrial Gallery, objects from a range of media were grouped thematically, according to different techniques, materials, uses or aesthetic features. The balcony above the Industrial Gallery featured a chronological display of ceramics, presenting a history of the medium from the sixteenth to the early twentieth centuries. A similar chronological display of silver was shown on the balcony above the Tearoom. A collection of studio pottery bequeathed by Stanley Sellers (discussed further by Matthew Bliss in this issue) was displayed in Gallery 10, whilst a handful of decorative art objects were also scattered throughout the art galleries; a magnificent musical clock from 1735 by Charles Clay, for instance, stood in the gallery otherwise dedicated to eighteenth-century painting. The emphasis throughout was primarily on matters of style and construction, with decorative art mostly considered separately from fine art.

The other space in the museum where decorative art objects were displayed was in the Birmingham History Galleries. Historically, there has been a divide in BMAG’s collection and collecting practices between decorative art and social history [4]. The latter has tended to focus on more quotidian objects, been more inclusive towards the stories and experiences of a wider range of society, and primarily foregrounded modern local history. The Birmingham History Galleries, which were reinstalled and reopened in 2025, utilise objects from various parts of the collection – archaeology, social history, decorative art, fine art, science and industry – to tell the story of Birmingham from the medieval period onwards. The decorative art objects displayed in those galleries are mostly examples of Birmingham manufactures.

When BMAG partially reopened in 2024, the museum aimed to better reflect Birmingham’s population and tell a wider range of stories in its redeveloped galleries. This process is ongoing, bolstered by a new organisational vision and with more galleries still to open [5]. So far, the emphasis has mostly been on recent histories and Birmingham stories, and few decorative art objects are currently on display. Visitors are unlikely to experience the same sense of nostalgia from objects made in the seventeenth century as those which they have encountered during their own lives, or the same sense of connection to objects from seventeenth-century Europe compared to contemporary Birmingham. But, even if there is not an associated photograph or oral history to bring them to life, it is still possible to gain a sense of people in the past from historic objects. For example, a seventeenth-century tin-glazed earthenware mug bears the inscription ‘Thomas Hunt and Mary, 1638’ (fig.2). Whilst we do not know who Thomas and Mary were or where they lived, we know that they were the original owners of this vessel, that the date 1638 held some particular resonance to them – possibly the date of their marriage – and that it was important to them to emblazon this mug with their names, though it is not certain whether this was as a sign of ownership or because it was a commemorative piece [6]. This object might seem relatively anonymous, with the exact identity of its makers and users not known, but it is still testament to people’s lives, speaking to how they lived, who they were and what they valued.

The historic decorative art objects in Birmingham’s collection were primarily collected and valued because of their craftsmanship and appearance. However, most of these objects were not conceived for the confines of a museum case. They were the stuff of everyday life, items which people made, used and lived with. Admittedly, biases in both what has survived and what museums have collected means that they predominantly speak to the experiences of the middling and upper classes, rather than the poorest members of society. But what if we viewed and interpreted Birmingham’s historic decorative art collection as material culture, alongside acknowledging its stylistic, technical and material qualities?

Using objects to tell stories about different people and cultures is by no means a radical idea: it is at the centre of museum practice and material culture studies, and over the last few decades the notion that objects are both worthy of study in their own right and are sources which can help deepen our understanding of history has been steadily growing in prominence and acceptance within academia [7]. But with decorative art objects, the tendency has often been to focus on ‘establishing the material truth of the object’, to prioritise stories about style and making rather than broader historical narratives [8]. A wooden standing cup made in Sweden (fig.3), for instance, was shown in the Industrial Gallery at BMAG from 2010–20 in a case on ‘Turning’ with the following label:

This cup has been turned in three separate parts. The foot and stem were turned as one piece and incorporated a wooden screw, which joined it to the bowl. The lid was turned afterwards. Its snug fit clearly demonstrates the capability of the turner. It is decorated with rose engine turning, a particularly skilled form of ornamental turning normally associated with lignum vitae work. The amount of detail and the accuracy of its presentation on this cup suggest that it was made by a turner, who also worked in ivory.

The emphasis here is on how the object was made, on the materials, skills and techniques it employs. I am not suggesting that we repudiate or sideline these important aspects of an object nor the tools, knowledge and material literacy which this kind of analysis requires [9]. Rather that we recognise that decorative art objects can also speak to a wider range of histories and experiences. How would this label differ if we considered what this object can tell us about life in the seventeenth-century Baltic, about the time and place in which it was made and used?

This is the approach which we are taking in a forthcoming touring exhibition, ‘Drama by Design: Art and Society in the Age of Gentileschi and Rubens’, developed by Birmingham Museums Trust in collaboration with the American Federation of Arts. The exhibition explores art and society in seventeenth-century Britain and Europe, a period of history which is little studied in schools and not very well known to most visitors today. It builds on the success of the recent exhibition ‘Victorian Radicals: From the Pre-Raphaelites to the Arts and Crafts Movement’, which also featured both fine and decorative art [10]. In ‘Drama by Design’, there will be a fifty-fifty split of fine and decorative art and both types of objects will be treated equally: celebrated and included for both their artistic merit and their ability to illuminate the history of the period. Issues of style and artistic change will be discussed, but so too will matters of society, politics, trade and religion, combining both historical and artistic interpretations of the objects on display, rather than foregrounding one over the other.

In the remainder of this article, I will examine three objects from Birmingham’s seventeenth-century decorative art collection, illustrating the kinds of themes these objects can explore – both in ‘Drama by Design’ and future interpretation at BMT sites – and what they can tell us about life in the past. All three objects – an ewer and basin, a charger and a cabinet – are visually and materially distinct, but connect to a broad conception of political history, from loyalty and patriotism, to people’s relationship with their rulers, and the ways in which conceptions of power and who possessed it shaped people’s lives and the objects they lived with.

The family, the city and the wider world: A silver ewer and basin

One of the stars of Birmingham’s seventeenth-century collection is a silver ewer and basin (fig.4). It has previously, and rightly, been celebrated by the museum as ‘an outstanding example of Mannerist design’ and ‘one of the finest works of Genoese silver known today’ [11]. Both the ewer and basin feature an abundance of ornament, including figures and scenes drawn from classical mythology. In the centre of the basin Neptune, the god of the sea, is shown being crowned by Victory, who also holds a coat of arms tilted towards the Lanterna, the lighthouse of Genoa.

The arms on the basin have been identified as those of the Lomellini family, one of the oldest, wealthiest and most powerful families in the Republic of Genoa during the early modern period [12]. It is thought that this set belonged to Giacomo Lomellini di Nicolò (1570–1652) and was made around 1619 to celebrate his marriage to Barbara Spinola. Like Venice, Genoa was ruled by a doge, who was elected by a small group of rich mercantile families from their own ranks and could only serve for a fixed term. Giacomo himself was the Doge of Genoa from 1625–27, during the period when Genoa was at war with the neighbouring Duchy of Savoy.

The Lomellini family had their portrait painted in the 1620s by the artist Anthony van Dyck, who spent six years in Italy from 1621–27, mostly based in Genoa (fig.5). This painting depicts Giacomo’s two eldest sons alongside his second wife Barbara and their two young children. Giacomo was not included as the doge was not allowed to have his portrait painted, in order to prevent him accumulating too much power whilst in office [13]. This portrait – the largest group portrait Van Dyck completed during his time in Italy – is an expression of the Lomellini’s familial pride and dynastic magnificence [14]. It showcases their ability to commission a painting from one of the most celebrated artists of the day, their fashionability, and their role in the defence of Genoa.

The ewer and basin acted in a similar manner. Such objects were used to wash one’s hands while dining, especially before cutlery came into widespread use. But by the early seventeenth century they were more often used as display pieces to demonstrate one’s wealth and taste. The value of objects like this was not just in the silver itself but in the extensive work and skill involved in their manufacture and decoration. Birmingham’s ewer and basin alone weighs over 5kg, but the Lomellini family also owned two additional sets: a twin to Birmingham’s, which is now in the Ashmolean, and a set in the V&A which originally belonged to the Grimaldi family [15]. All three sets were purchased in Naples by the fifth Earl of Shaftesbury before 1807 [16]. How they ended up in Naples, or their history between their production and acquisition by Shaftesbury is unknown, but the fact that they survived, rather than being melted down for currency or remade into something more fashionable, suggests that they were valued enough to be kept intact.

As well as demonstrating the status of the Lomellini family – who not only owned such a set but emblazoned it with their coat of arms – the inclusion of the Lanterna on the basin connects it inextricably to Genoa. Through their marine imagery and depiction of the crowning of Neptune, the ewer and basin celebrate the Republic of Genoa and its role as a maritime power, intrinsically linked to the sea. They thus expressed the family’s patriotism and relationship to the city state whose ruling elite they were a part of. According to some scholars, Giacomo was known for being a strong supporter of the republican system in Genoa, and thus was regarded suspiciously by Spain, under whose aegis Genoa fell [17].

Genoa’s prosperity was tied to international shipping and banking and its mercantile elites used much of their wealth to buy palaces, art, and luxury goods [18]. The opportunities for patronage and employment that they provided drew many artists to the city from overseas, particularly from the Low Countries [19]. The design and manufacture of this ewer and basin suggest a strong Flemish influence, and they were probably created by a Flemish goldsmith living in Genoa [20]. The ewer and basin also reflect Genoa’s global connections by being made of silver. The transatlantic expeditions of the Genoese sailor Christopher Columbus (Cristoforo Colombo) for the Spanish monarchy in 1492 led to the colonisation of much of the American continent by Europeans, who were keen to exploit the riches those lands provided. Vast quantities of silver were mined in the Americas during the early modern period under Spanish instruction. While we do not know for certain if Birmingham’s ewer and basin were made from this silver, the extraction of so much silver at Potosí, now in Bolivia, enabled far more silver objects to be produced than ever before [21]. A lot of this silver also went directly to Genoa as currency, in repayment of loans to the Spanish crown from Genoese bankers; in 1626–30 more than half the money coming into Seville ended up in Genoese pockets [22].

Depicting and collecting royalty: An earthenware charger decorated with William and Mary

The world was increasingly interconnected during the early modern period, and this was reflected in the material culture of the time [23]. Not only were more objects traded on a global scale – paid for in part by American silver – but there was also a rise in objects which were amalgamations of materials, ideas and techniques from a variety of different places [24]. These influences were not always obvious or visible; as Carolyn Dean and Dana Leibsohn have noted, all objects are hybrid to a certain degree [25]. An earthenware charger (large plate) made in England in the late seventeenth century (fig.6), most likely in London, might not seem like a ‘global’ object, but it is tin-glazed, a technique which was developed in Hispano-Moresque pottery, before being used in Italian maiolica and then coming to England via the Netherlands in the 1600s [26].

A ceramic charger like this would have been much more affordable than a silver ewer and basin, but its function was similarly primarily one of display. It depicts William III and Mary II, King and Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland from 1689 until Mary’s death in 1694 and William’s in 1702. Mary, the daughter of James II and his first wife, married her cousin William of Orange in 1677. When James ascended to the throne in 1685, following the death of his brother Charles II, his Catholic faith put him at odds with the established religion of the country and most of his subjects. While his reign was initially tolerated, his pro-Catholic policies and the birth of a son and heir – who replaced the Protestant Mary in the line of succession – to his Catholic second wife led to the ‘Glorious Revolution’. William of Orange invaded at the bequest of a group of English nobles in 1688, forcing James to abandon the throne and flee into exile, and William and Mary were then crowned in his place.

Although William and Mary were supposedly joint monarchs, in reality William held all the administrative power [27]. Mary only truly ‘ruled’ when William was away fighting, and even then in a limited and temporary capacity [28]. This charger testifies to this unequal division of power, which was heavily influenced by patriarchal notions of the different capabilities and roles of husbands and wives. Both monarchs are crowned, but only William holds the symbols of sovereignty – an orb and sceptre. Mary instead holds a fan, confined to the realm of fashion and frivolity rather than affairs of state.

Did the charger’s painter understand the nuances of the division of power between the royal couple, reflecting the increasing availability of news in this period? Does the lack of resemblance to portraits of William and Mary suggest that the painter based his image on woodcuts found on broadside ballads? Such woodcuts were frequently reused, so they were rarely accurate representations of the figures they were meant to depict. They often showed William as a soldier and king and Mary without state robes and with an exposed décolleté, reinforcing the difference in their roles [29]. There is a similar charger to Birmingham’s in the collection of the Fitzwilliam Museum – does this copy or modify an unidentified printed image, or reflect the artist’s own ideas about how to represent the royal couple? [30]

Images of the Stuart monarchs, including William and Mary, were one of the most popular forms of decoration for chargers and other pieces of earthenware in the second half of the seventeenth century in England. This was part of a broader increase in the circulation of royal imagery in the period. While we cannot say for certain how such objects were used or valued, it seems most likely that they expressed a sense of loyalty towards the monarch. There are far fewer extant ceramics featuring James II than either Charles II or William and Mary, indicating James’s relative lack of popularity; most people did not want to own an object which could be seen as a profession of love or loyalty towards him and his Catholic beliefs [31].

Personal connections and invented histories: A cabinet from Aston Hall

The final object this article discusses also connects rulers and the home. Whilst the charger did this through its visual depiction of the king and queen, a cabinet in Birmingham’s collection achieved this via the perceived relationship between a monarch and the cabinet’s owners. The cabinet is made of walnut and features forty drawers, including a couple of concealed ones, making it more obviously functional than the other two objects discussed in this article (fig.7). It is currently displayed in the Withdrawing Room at Aston Hall, a mansion built 1618–35, which is managed by Birmingham Museums Trust. The visitor route tells the chronological story of Aston Hall and its inhabitants, with different rooms arranged to represent different periods of history. The furnishing of the rooms and presentation of objects are not foregrounded in the current interpretation, but they help provide visitors with a sense of changes in fashionable interiors and material culture over time, and how Aston Hall – or similar houses – may have appeared at certain dates. Three bedrooms, for instance, are furnished to each represent different periods of history: the mid-seventeenth century, the late eighteenth century, and the early nineteenth century. By being placed in a particular space in relation to other objects, objects are further contextualised by association. This immersive display helps situate the visitor in history, giving them a sense of what Aston Hall was like when its various inhabitants lived there. Most of the objects at Aston Hall are from Birmingham’s wider collection, representing the types of furnishings it may once have held. But a few have a direct connection to the Hall and its former inhabitants, including this cabinet.

The cabinet was donated to the museum by Charles Holte Bracebridge (1799–1872), a direct descendant of the Holtes, the family who built and lived at Aston Hall until 1817. There is a reference to the cabinet in the will of Mary Holte (1684–1759), an unmarried daughter of Sir Charles Holte who moved out of Aston Hall at an unknown date and established her own household in Sutton Coldfield. Mary bequeathed ‘my Cabinet which was King Charles the Ffirst’ to her nephew, the then owner of Aston Hall, Sir Lister Holte [32]. In 1642, a few days before the Battle of Edgehill, Charles I had stayed the night at Aston Hall. This royal visit loomed large in the family’s history: the room where Charles had slept was christened the ‘King’s Chamber’ in the eighteenth century [33]. A visitor to the Hall in 1793 reported that the housekeeper ‘shew’d me the Kings (C. 1st) bed room, wherein stands a curious cabinet he presented to the family’ [34].

It is, however, highly unlikely that this cabinet was gifted to the Holte family by Charles I, not least because it probably dates to the 1660s, several years after Charles was beheaded [35]. Yet at some point, it became associated in the minds of the Holtes and their wider household with the King’s visit to Aston Hall. The cabinet was thus turned into a material memorial of an auspicious day in the Hall’s history, imbued with a significance beyond just being a useful place to store treasured possessions [36]. The meaning of this particular cabinet might have been personal to the Holte family, but it relates to a wider trend of ascribing a false provenance to an object in order to connect it to a celebrity or royal [37].

The cabinet relates directly to the cult of Charles I, whose beheading during the Civil War turned him into a martyr. His death was much lamented by supporters of the crown and the Royalist cause: a locket in Birmingham’s collection bears the inscription ‘Prepared bee to follow mee / I live and die in loyaltie’ alongside ‘CR’ (for Carolus Rex or King Charles) and a skull, a symbol often used on seventeenth-century memorial jewellery commemorating a loved one (fig.8). But Charles was also heavily romanticised in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, which found material expression in trends like dressing in ‘Vandyck’-style clothing for masquerade balls or portraits [38]. In 1770, Sir Charles Holte (1721–82) commemorated his ancestors’ connection to Charles I by commissioning Thomas Gainsborough to portray him dressed in a doublet (fig. 9). The alleged link between this cabinet and the former monarch was also something Charles and his family celebrated; the cabinet was one of the few items that Charles’s wife Anne salvaged from Aston Hall after the death of her sister-in-law in 1794 [39].

Conclusion

Any object can tell a myriad of different stories; the three case studies presented here are just a taster, rather than a complete unravelling of all the different elements of the past that these objects relate to. I have demonstrated how these three objects are all expressions of patriotism and loyalty of a sort. They thus provide an alternative perspective on political history, helping us to understand what people thought about their rulers and how those beliefs could be expressed in material form. But they also illuminate other aspects of the seventeenth century, from the ever-increasing connectedness of the world to the ways this period was commemorated and understood by subsequent generations.

With only around sixty words in an object label, it is generally only possible to focus on one or two facets of an object. Curators have to make choices about what they want to highlight about the object, about what fits best with the overarching narrative of the gallery or display. Objects in Birmingham’s decorative art collection can be a source of inspiration, beauty and wonder. But they can also be windows into the past, enabling us to further understand how people lived and understood the world around them. As items which people made, bought, and lived with, the objects in Birmingham’s seventeenth-century decorative art collection can be seen as material culture as well as decorative art. They can tell us about life and belief in the seventeenth century, about the context in which they were made and consumed and the people who interacted with them. This approach of using objects to tell historical stories is by no means unique or innovative, but it is not the main way that Birmingham’s seventeenth-century decorative art collection has previously been used and interpreted, with the emphasis in the past mostly having been on matters of style, construction and manufacture.

When BMAG was first established in 1885, the collection and display of early modern decorative art, especially from Italy, was central to the museum’s aims to educate and inspire Birmingham’s workers and manufacturers. Now, this collection is no longer foregrounded in the museum’s vision or displays. But might a different tactic to the salon hangs and minimal interpretation of the late nineteenth century or the inclusion of a handful of seventeenth-century objects in the more stylistically focused displays of the early twenty-first century help make these objects more intriguing, exciting and comprehensible to visitors today? Birmingham Museums Trust will put this alternative approach into practice in the forthcoming exhibition ‘Drama by Design’, placing objects from the seventeenth-century decorative art collection alongside paintings and sculptures and celebrating and appreciating their artistic merit while also using them to illustrate and illuminate a greater array of narratives and past human experiences. In so doing, we will explore further how we can practically use such objects to elucidate complicated and often unfamiliar histories for visitors and gain insight into how visitors respond to the art collections being used to tell more historical stories.

Rebecca Unsworth is Curator of Decorative Art at Birmingham Museums Trust.

Notes

[1] See also Maialen Maugars, ‘Collecting Early Modern Italian Decorative Art for Late Nineteenth-Century Birmingham’, unpublished PhD thesis, University of Warwick (2025).

[2] Beth L. Holman (ed.), Disegno: Italian Renaissance Designs for the Decorative Arts (Dubuque, 1997), p.3.

[3] Marta Ajmar, ‘Mechanical Disegno’, RIHA Journal, 84(2014), DOI: https://doi.org/10.11588/riha.2014.1.69962, accessed 29 January 2026; Tim Ingold, The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill (Abingdon, 2000).

[4] For a further discussion of this issue in relation to Birmingham’s collection, see Rebecca Unsworth, ‘Mrs Hawker’s Purse’, Midlands Art Papers, 4 (2021), https://www.birmingham.ac.uk/research/projects/midlands-art-papers/issue-4/object-in-focus-mrs-hawkers-purse, accessed 9 February 2026.

[5] On Birmingham Museum Trust’s new vision and strategy, see https://www.birminghammuseums.org.uk/about/what-we-do/our-strategy.

[6] Edward Town and Angela McShane (eds), Marking Time: Objects, People, and their Lives, 1500–1800 (London, 2020).

[7] Serena Dyer, ‘State of the Field: Material Culture’, History, 106.370 (2021), pp.282-92; Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello, ‘Material Culture History: Methods, Practices and Disciplines’, in Anne Gerritsen and Giorgio Riello (eds), Writing Material Culture History (London, 2021), pp.1–19; Giorgio Riello, ‘Things that Shape History: Material Culture and Historical Narratives’, in Karen Harvey (ed.), History and Material Culture: A Student’s Guide to Approaching Alternative Sources (Abingdon, 2018), pp.27–50.

[8] Leora Auslander, ‘Beyond Words’, American Historical Review, 110.4 (2005), pp.1025–26.

[9] Glenn Adamson, ‘Design History and the Decorative Arts’, in Peter N. Miller (ed.), Cultural Histories of the Material World (Ann Arbor, 2013), pp.33–38.

[10] ‘Victorian Radicals’ toured the USA with the American Federation of Arts from 2018–2022 https://www.amfedarts.org/victorian-radicals/. It was then shown in the Gas Hall at BMAG from 10 February 2024 to 5 January 2025. It featured a roughly sixty-forty split of fine and decorative art, with a slightly larger number of fine art objects.

[11] Martin Ellis (ed.), World Art from Birmingham Museums and Art Gallery (London, 1999), p.108.

[12] Hugh Macandrew, ‘Genoese Silver on Loan to the Ashmolean Museum’, The Burlington Magazine, 114.834 (1972), p.616.

[13] ‘The Lomellini Family’, National Galleries of Scotland, https://www.nationalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/4869, accessed 23 January 2026.

[14] Christopher White, Anthony van Dyck and the Art of Portraiture (London, 2021), p.120.

[15] Over 270 kg of silver objects were listed in an inventory made after Giacomo’s death. Franco Boggero and Farida Simonetti, ‘Grandi argenti per le dimore genovesi: le committenze Pallavicino e Lomellini’, in Piero Boccardo (ed.), L’Età di Rubens: dimore, committenti e collezionisti Genovesi (Milan, 2004), p. 118; V&A, M.11&A-1974; Ashmolean, WA1974.234 and WA1974.235.

[16] Macandrew (1972), p.619.

[17] Franco Boggero and Farida Simonetti, Argenti Genovesi da parata tra cinquecento e seicento (Turin, 1991), p.97.

[18] Piero Boccardo, ‘Genoa and the Genoese in the Time of Van Dyck’, in Christopher Brown and Hans Vlieghe (eds), Van Dyck 1599–1641 (London, 1999), p.50.

[19] White (2021), pp.72–74; J.F. Hayward, Virtuoso Goldsmiths and the Triumph of Mannerism 1540–1620 (London, 1976), p.161.

[20] Macandrew (1972), p.619.

[21] Hayward (1976), p.32.

[22] Boccardo (1999), p.50.

[23] Paula Findlen, ‘Early Modern Things: Objects in Motion, 1500–1800’, in Paula Findlen (ed.), Early Modern Things: Objects and their Histories 1500–1800 (Abingdon, 2021), pp.1–25.

[24] Marta Ajmar-Wollheim and Luca Molá, ‘The Global Renaissance: Cross-Cultural Objects in the Early Modern Period’, in Glenn Adamson, Giorgio Riello and Sarah Teasley (eds), Global Design History (Abingdon, 2011), pp.11–20; Dennis O’Flynn and Arturo Giráldez, ‘Born with a “Silver Spoon”: The Origins of World Trade in 1571’, Journal of World History, 6.2 (1995), pp.201–21.

[25] Carolyn Dean and Dana Leibsohn, ‘Hybridity and its Discontents: Considering Visual Culture in Colonial Spanish America’, Colonial Latin American Review, 12.1 (2003), p.25.

[26] Alan Caiger-Smith, Tin-glaze pottery in Europe and the Islamic World: The Tradition of 1000 Years in Maiolica, Faience & Delftware (London, 1973).

[27] Lois G. Schwoerer, ‘Images of Queen Mary II, 1689–95’, Renaissance Quarterly, 42.4 (1989), pp.728–29.

[28] Ibid., pp.735–36.

[29] Clare Backhouse, Fashion and Popular Print in Early Modern England: Depicting Dress in Black-Letter Ballads (London, 2017), pp.140–41; Angela McShane Jones, ‘Revealing Mary’, History Today, 54.3 (2004), DOI: https://www.historytoday.com/archive/revealing-mary, accessed 29 January 2026.

[30] Fitzwilliam Museum, C.1634-1928.

[31] Angela McShane, ‘Subjects and Objects: Material Expressions of Love and Loyalty in Seventeenth-Century England’, Journal of British Studies, 48 (2009), pp.871–86.

[32] Will of Mary Holte, 1757, The National Archives, PROB 11/950/315.

[33] Inventory of Aston Hall, 1771, Warwickshire County Record Office, CR 613/1, p.12.

[34] Quoted in Oliver Fairclough, The Grand Old Mansion: The Holtes and their Successors at Aston Hall 1618–1864 (Birmingham, 1984), p.86.

[35] With thanks to Nick Humphrey and Jenny Saunt of the V&A for their assistance in dating this piece.

[36] Nick Humphrey, ‘Cabinet Furniture’, in Elizabeth Miller and Hilary Young (eds), The Arts of Living: Europe 1600-1815 (London, 2016), pp.110–13.

[37] For a discussion of how this issue relates to early modern gloves, see Rebecca Unsworth, ‘Ownership and Imprints: Famous Hands and Famous Gloves’, (13 April 2016) https://bexunsworth.wordpress.com/2016/04/13/ownership-and-imprints-famous-hands-and-famous-gloves/, accessed 14 January 2026.

[38] Rebecca Unsworth, ‘Dressing Up: The Popularity of Vandyke Clothing in the Eighteenth Century’, ArtUK, (12 July 2024), https://artuk.org/discover/stories/dressing-up-the-popularity-of-vandyke-clothing-in-the-eighteenth-century, accessed 14 January 2026.

[39] Inventory of the property of Anne Holte, 1796, Warwickshire County Record Office, CR 2198.