Designers and Jewellery 1850-1940

Book excerpt: The Fitzwilliam Museum holds stunning examples of jewellery and metalwork from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This exceptional period of design covers the neo-Gothic and historicist designs of the 1850s and 1860s, the ground-breaking work of British Arts & Crafts designers, sinuous curves influenced by the European Art Nouveau movement and the structural modernity of the 1930s. Arranged chronologically by designer - Alessandro Castellani, John Brogden, William Burges, Henry Wilson, C.R. Ashbee and Omar Ramsden to name some - this beautifully illustrated volume reproduces over 50 of the Museum's most important pieces from this highly popular and fruitful period, many previously unpublished.