Christopher Hartop
Introduction by Ellenor Alcorn

2007. 264 pages  
700+ duotone and 8 color illustrations
8 x 10 in.

ISBN 978-0-300-11770-7

Hardcover. $75.00 ($67.50 for Members)

Trade distribution by Yale University Press

The Fogg Art Museum’s collection of silver made in the British Isles over three centuries is one of the most comprehensive of its kind in America. It includes objects that range from Elizabethan cups to works by such well-known figures as Jacob Bodendeich, Paul de Lamerie, and Hester Bateman. Also featured are iconic objects of Harvard University’s own historic silver, such as the Great Salt, the university’s oldest relic, which has been in America since the 1630s.

Some 280 objects are beautifully reproduced, as are all marks, a number of which are newly identified. Fascinating texts analyze and describe the collection and examine the changing tastes of silver collectors in twentieth-century New England, painting a vivid portrait of collecting decorative arts in America. The contributions foreign craftsmen made to silver produced in London in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries are also discussed, providing new information on the silversmithing trade of the time.

Christopher Hartop is an independent author and consultant. He was head of the Silver Department and later executive vice president, Christie’s, New York, 1984–99. He has written several books, including The Huguenot Legacy: English Silver 1680–1760, which was awarded the National Huguenot Society Annual Book Prize in 1997. Ellenor Alcorn is curator for the Gans Collection of English Silver at the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond.