THE monumental works of E. A. Jones, The Gold and Silver of Windsor Castle, published in a limited edition of 285 copies in 1911, still enjoys a prestige quite unrelated to its availability. It was extensively used by Charles Oman and John Hayward in the preparation of the exhibition of Royal Plate held at the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1954. Jones's book comprises a scholarly catalogue, extensively though not comprehensively illustrated, preceded by a long introduction dealing with the history of the collection and the types of plate represented in it.

IF the long and varied history of church plate, if shrines and of reliquaries can be reconstructed from documents and from surviving examples in moderately satisfactory detail, little has been done for the history of another important form of Christian devotional art, the votive offering. No doubt in part this is because most ex-votos, as monuments of individual or corporate thanksgiving, cannot in the nature of things, expect an existence that long outlasts the life of the donors or the protection that their descendants or successors can afford them. 

IN two previous articles published in THE BURLINGTON MAGAZINE in June and July, 1977, I attempted, perhaps optimistically, to group together a number of late fifteenth and early sixteenth-century pieces of English plate in stylistic and chronological order. This exercise grew from the frustration of having seen so many varied opinions expressed about late Gothic stylistic innovation, if that is the right word to use in a period when motif were repeated with little modification for two hundred years or more, in some instances. 

THE champleve enamelled crozier or baculus in the Bargello, Carrand Collection No.622, is relatively well known, yet little attempt has in the past been made to place it in the general context of twelfth century croziers, or to do more than state its country of origin. Attention has focused on the Virtues and Vices engraved on the stem, or cambuca, at the expense of the scenes from the life of David depicted on the knop or pomellum. These, however, are of considerable interest both in their connection with the figures on the stem, and in their relationship to contemporary manuscripts. 

AMONG the ancient rights and privileges claimed by the City of London is that of sending the Lord Mayor and a number of citizens to serve each new monarch at the naquet held after his or her coronation. The details of this service are given as follows in the claim made by the City to the Lord Steward before the Coronation of Richard II in 1377 (translated from the original Latin). 

THE drawing which is the subject of this notice bears on the left side two annotations in Italian, while on the right is another in Italian, while on the right is another in German, followed by the signature of Hans Lencker. The presence of the signature does not necessarily imply that the drawing wa executed by Lencker. When a major piece of silver was to be made at this period any one of three methods might be adopted to obtain a Visierung (design). 

IT is a paradox that the eighteenth century, so rich in goldsmiths and painters, should have produced relatively few portraits of the men and women who fashioned the masterpieces of wrought plate for which the century is justly acclaimed. Louise Courtauld, the celebrated oman goldsmith, sat to Zoffany, and Gainsborough painted a sympathetic portrait of the little known silversmith George Coyte, his friend since boyhood, but there is no likeness of Paul de Lamerie, Ann Tanquerary or the Godfreys.

IN 1973 the Victoria and Albert Museum acquired a small brass figure of a censing angel, previously unrecorded. It had belonged to an American lady,  who is known to have spent some years in Paris and England during the early 1870s and who may have acquired it in France. The plate, which bears ripple-marks from the casting on its back, varies in thickness between 1.7 and 2.0mm. Analysis suggests nothing atypical in its composition. Some surface pitting may indicate that the fragment has been buried.