The gift in 1874 of the Palazzo Rosso to the city of Genoa by Maria duchessa di Galliera (1811-88), the last representative of the house of Brignole-Sale, included not only the well-known collection of paintings but also sets of furnishings which were further augmented after the donor's death and constitute an outstandingly fine and coherent ensemble. Their historical significance has further been enhanced by the subsequent transferral to the city of the family archive by the heirs, the principi Carrega Bertolini; and now that the archive has become available to scholars after the customary period of restriction it has begun to yield information fundamental for the full study of this rich heritage.'

In 1864 King Tewodros of Ethiopia, frustrated by a lack of response to his appeals, took desperate action. He imprisoned the British consul in Ethiopia and over the next three years seized several other Europeans and their families. Queen Victoria did not take this indignity lightly and in the autumn of 1867 dispatched from India an expeditionary force of more than twelve thousand men, led by Sir Robert Napier, to liberate them. After traversing nearly four hundred miles of difficult terrain, the army laid siege to Tewodros in his highland fortress of Maqdala. Following a brief encounter, the king committed suicide on 13th April 1868 and the fortress fell into British hands.'

A hitherto unpublished tabernacle, acquired in 1991 from a European private collection by the Meadows Museum of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, is an unusual and intriguing example of the liturgical art of late medieval Catalonia (Figs. 46, 47, 48, 49, 50 and 51). Extensive conservation completed in October 1994,' has provided an ideal opportunity for studying its context and iconography. It consists of a wooden cabinet measuring 231 cm. high, 107 cm. wide and 53 cm. deep, divided by a low shelf into two unequal compartments, the upper and larger of which is partly enclosed by a trefoil-arched panel. Two narrow doors close the structure. Tempera paintings cover the interior: on the rear wall is a Crucifixion scene framed by a gilded trefoil-arched moulding and surmounted by two kneeling angels, now hidden behind the enclosing panel (Fig.48); on the doors are paired the figures of the angel Gabriel opposite the Annunciate Virgin and St John the Evangelist opposite an unidentified virgin martyr.2 It is also embellished by a variety of gilded relief ornament, ranging from a rich mudejar inter- lace on the outer faces of both doors (Fig.54) to gothic openwork tracery along the top of the body and the edge of the enclosing panel.

In 1989, a tiny, beautifully wrought silver object was recovered from the Thames waterfront. A chance find of exceptional interest and historical significance, it proved to be an inscribed chape (a protective metal cap for a belt end) which can be dated with some confidence to the first half of the sixteenth century and associated with an identifiable owner. It is now in the collections of the Museum of London.

During the night of 14th December 1729 a fire broke out in the Munich Residenz, spreading through the first floor of the south wing of the Grottenhof. In his diary, the Bavarian Elector Karl Albrecht lamented the losses caused by the conflagration, but observed that the Hausschatz or family treasury had luckily been spared.' Shortly thereafter the architect Francois Cuvillies received the commission for the decoration of a new Schatzkammer (Fig.61), which would be reached through the recently completed Ahnengalerie or Gallery of Ancestors, the spatial separation of the treasury offering more security for its contents in the event of another fire.

In a recent article in this Magazine, Peter Francis claimed not only that Irish 'Volunteer' and Williamite glasses were of a manufacture much later than the dates hitherto accepted by glass scholars and collectors (c. 1778-98, and c. 1750 and c. 1790 respectively) but that they should be viewed as instances of a 're-invention of history'.' With reference to the 'Volunteer' glasses, Francis's claims have been uncontroversial, although his case against Williamite glasses has not gone unquestioned.2 It is the extension of Francis's claims to Jacobite glasses which remains contentious.3

In October 1771 Matthew Boulton wrote to Lord Cathcart, the British ambassador at the court at St Petersburg.' Some six weeks earlier he had sent the ambassador an assortment of ornamental ormolu-mounted vases on the recommendation of 'our friend and benefactor the Earl of Warwick, as well as Monsr Moushin Pouskin the Russian ambassador'. Boulton hoped that Cathcart, through his 'well known disposition to promote every or usefull and laudable art and every branch of the commerce of your country', would help him and his partner, John Fothergill, to sell their ormolu- mounted objects to the Russian aristocracy.2 Boulton very much wanted to develop markets overseas for his new luxury products, as he explains in his letter.

At the print-room of the Victoria and Albert Museum is an eighteenth-century drawing showing an elaborate pagoda-like construction surmounted by a clock (Fig.71).' The object depicted, with its ostentatious display and elaboration of ornament is unmistakably in the style of the celebrated goldsmith, manufacturer of clocks and automata, and great showman and entrepreneur,James Cox (active 1749-c.1791).' The importance of the drawing is twofold. First it must record the appearance of one of Cox's more elaborate projects - many examples of which he exhibited at his Mechanical Museum in Spring Gardens between 1772 and 1774, and secondly, it is possible to make an informed guess as to the actual authorship of the sheet.3