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Description: | The collection of ceramics covers British pottery and porcelain from the medieval to present including a London delftware bowl of c.1730, Chinese export ware, the Caldwell Collection of Custard Cups and the Langton Cat Collection with 94 miniature cats; part of this collection, Ancient Egyptian miniature cats, is at University College, London. Also an important group of items of ceramic and glass decorated by William Absolon (1751-1815). The glass and silver collections covering 18th and 19th centuries includes Lynn glass and the earliest English silver tea-kettle of 1694. The jewellery collection, of Anne Hull Grundy, has 18th century paste and mid to late 19th century pieces. The British ceramic teapot collection has 3,000 pieces comprising the Bulwer Collection, with pots from 1720-1780 and the Miller collection, from c.1780-1970. There is a significant collection of 400 pieces of Lowestoft porcelain with links to local collections from their time of production including many rarities and diagnostic pieces spanning the factoryÃ's production from c.1757-1801 especially birth tablets, painted discs made to commemorate the birth of a child and souvenirs featuring local scenes.
Contemporary craft collection, most outstanding collection in East Anglia is mainly ceramics and glass, but also work in wood, jewellery, textiles, precious and non precious jewellery. Makers include Elizabeth Fritsch, Alison Britton, Philip Eglin, Steven Newell, Caroline Broadhead, Wendy Ramshaw and Rod Kelly.
Important bequests include Norwich silver from Robert Fitch in 1894; W. W. Rix SpelmanÃ's gift of Lowestoft fragments and moulds; Susanna Taylor bequest of English pottery and porcelain; Lettice Colman collection of Lowestoft porcelain given in 1944 and 600 British 18th century teapots given by Mrs Bulwer in 1946; her brother Colonel C.H.B. Caldwell donated a collection of custard cups in 1939. Also gifts of Norwich silver from the Misses Colman and Russell J. Colman and a large purchase from Philip Miller of 2,000 British ceramic teapots in 1988.
The Norwich Silver is 100 strong and is the only important public collection in existence. Many objects are secular as most church plate remains with the churches, but the collection includes ecclesiastical objects on loan from Norfolk parishes. Silver was assayed in Norwich during three periods between 1565 and 1702. Norwich Castle and the Norwich City Regalia and Civic Plate Collections hold the great majority of all the secular silver produced by the Norwich goldsmiths.
The collection includes pieces by Arthur Haselwood the Elder, William Cobbold and Thomas Havers especially the Cobbold Flagon, which is recognised as probably the most important piece of Norwich silver after the Reade Salt (Norwich City Collection) and a beaker of c.1575-80 by William Cobbold, one of a set of four from the Dutch Church (Blackfriars Hall, Norwich). Two of the other beakers are in the Ashmolean Museum Oxford and the fourth is in the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam.
Norwich Castle also holds around 400 pieces of church silver belonging to the Diocese of Norwich probably some of the finest in Britain including a group of pre Reformation patens dating from the 13th - 20th centuries especially the 17th-century Oxnead plate, the St AndrewÃ's steeple cup of 1617 and the West Acre flagon of 1607. Between 1565 and 1702 the city of Norwich had its own assay office, and 700 pieces survive, with 100 in the care of Norfolk Museum and Archaeology Service. Half are church plate and half Civic Regalia, which includes several pieces of Norwich Silver. | Source: | Cornucopia - Discovering UK Collections | FAX: | +44 (0)1603 493623 | Telephone: | +44 (0)1603 493625 | Identifier: | oai:www.cornucopia.org.uk:6620 | Go to resource |
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