Designer British Silver explores the designer-silversmiths who have shaped British silver from the 1950s through to the present day. Covering a complete generation of craftsmen and women, and featuring one-to-one interviews with key figures, the book reveals the people and forces behind the post-war Renaissance that made Britain a centre of excellence for designer makers in silver. The fifty leading figures are covered in-depth, from Malcolm Appleby to John Willmin. Detailed insight is provided on the lives and works of each maker, alongside lavish illustrations and extended captions telling the story of every remarkable piece of silver. Designer British Silver also includes a fascinating overview of the post-war revival of British silver, a section on where to view designer British silver and additional listings of designers, craftsmen, silver manufacturers and engravers. Contents: Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Foreword; Introduction; The Work and Lives of the Leading Designer-Silversmiths; Listing of Designers, Craftsmen, Silver Manufacturers and Engravers; Where to see Designer British Silver; Glossary; Bibliography; Index.

"Twentieth-Century Pattern Design combines photographs - including many newly published images - with soundly researched text, creating an essential resource for enthusiasts and historians of modern design. The book also serves as a creative sourcebook for students and designers, inspiring new flights of fancy in pattern design."--Jacket.

"Taking as their brief the design of a simple fish server or cake slice, the British and American silversmiths whose work is represented in the collection of Benton Seymour Rabinovitch have produced a range of variations on a single theme. From the minimal simplicity of the purely functional to the lavish ostentation of the truly baroque, these pieces utilize elements of sea life, Scandinavian design, Florida Art Deco, eighteenth-century Rococo and totemic, timeless symbols of the natural world to forceful effect. Whether entirely abstract or startlingly representative, what these pieces have in common is the immense technical mastery that has gone into their design and construction - as well as the fact that, no matter how fantastic their appearance, they are all meant for practical use." "Each piece in the collection is illustrated in colour with a specially commissioned photograph and accompanied by an account of the work's conception. Personal accounts of the artists' guiding aesthetic and technical principles provide a long-needed, unique and authoritative window into current design practice both in Britain and the United States." "The authors provide a step-by-step guide to commissioning one's own pieces, as well as a design-historical context to the last fifty years of the craft. Designers and makers, curators and collectors, craft writers and historians, as well as anyone interested in the beautiful, will find in the volume a fund of information and inspiration."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Published for Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture, New York.

Sir Norman Hartnell (1901-1979) dominated London couture during the inter-war years, gaining international fame as dressmaker to the British royal family, designing Princess Elizabeth's wedding gown in 1947, and her magnificent Coronation dress six years later. Best known for romantic eveningwear shimmering with beads and embroidery, he cemented London's position as an innovative fashion centre. Silver and Gold, first published in 1955, describes an extraordinary life with elegance and panache.

This is a richly illustrated volume that focuses on the remarkably ornamented silverware produced by Indian craftsmen during the period of the British Raj. Silversmiths created elegant silver tea services, bowls, wine and water ewers, beer mugs, and goblets to adorn the sideboard or mantelpiece in a British Raj home, creating European forms fulfilling European requirements. These same silversmiths then adopted a unique manner of embellishing these objects with a variety of different motifs that reflect local taste and carry a recognizably local pattern. This book carries a set of five essays that explore different facets of the production and consumption of Indian silver for the Raj. It considers the silverware in terms of its clearly distinguishable regional styles, which is prefaced by two thematic sections, one on calling card cases and the other on tea services, which demonstrate its wide prevalence. The visual presentation of the silverware does justice to it dazzling quality. The book is published in conjunction with an exhibition that opens at the Miriam & Ira D Wallach Art Gallery, Columbia University, New York, in September 2008.