This is an account of the unique assemblage of silver and silver-mounted artefacts belonging to Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, some of them dating back to the College's foundation 650 years ago. They include extraordinary objects such as a thirteenth-century drinking vessel made of the horn of an extinct animal, as well as the everyday tools and utensils of past centuries. Although some of them are well known to art historians, they have never been published in detail. The objects are especially significant for being documented in the College's archives from the fourteenth century onwards. The book investigates the objects' construction, how the College came by them, their original meaning and context, how they came to survive the depredations of the Civil War, what happened to those that do not survive, evidence of wear and repair, and what they were (and still are) used for.
By:
Oliver Rackham (University of Cambridge)
Photographs by:
John Cleaver (University of Cambridge)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions:
Height: 254mm,
Width: 198mm,
Spine: 28mm
Weight: 1.102kg
ISBN: 9780521818803
ISBN 10: 052181880X
Pages: 320
Publication Date: 05 December 2002
Audience:
General/trade
,
Professional and scholarly
,
ELT Advanced
,
Undergraduate
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Foreword by the Master of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, Professor Haroon Ahmed; Preface; 1. Outline of the college's history; 2. Introduction to plate; 3. Plate in the college; 4. The Great Horn or Bugle; 5. Plate of the gilds: the Coconut Cup; 6. Medieval college plate: mazers, seals, and the Knob; 7. Parkerians and Elizabethan plate (with a contribution by C. Hall); 8. Fellow-commoners and the Civil War; 9. Chapel plate; 10. Post-1690 drinking vessels; 11. Coffee pots, also Argyle, teapots and associated vessels; 12. Candlesticks; 13. Salvers or waiters; 14. Inkstands or standishes; 15. Casters or dredgers, cruet frames, grinders, and the administration of sugar; 16. Salts and saltspoons; 17. Mustards and mustard spoons; 18. Tools or flatware; 19. Instruments of tobacconing; 20. Sporting plate; 21. Things useful and extravagant; 22. Modernistic plate; Appendices; Bibliography.
Oliver Rackham OBE , FBA has been a Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, since 1964, and is an historical ecologist and historian of landscape. John Cleaver is Assistant Director of Research at the Microelectronics Research Centre, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, where his research interests are in physics and the fabrication of novel microelectronic devices.
